Putin asks Trump and Xi for three-way meeting, WSJ reports
The request follows weeks of Kremlin statements about a possible trilateral summit with no agreement yet reached
Published
Vladimir Putin has asked Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to join a three-way meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The idea has circulated for weeks without being settled. In early September, the Kremlin said Putin, Trump and Xi could meet on the sidelines of November's APEC summit. Putin said in early October he was ready for such a meeting but that an agenda would need to be worked out first, according to The Standard. On October 6, his aide Yuri Ushakov said a bilateral Putin-Xi meeting was set for APEC, but that no agreement had been reached on adding Trump, according to UNN. Separately, Trump said in September he would "love" to host Putin and Xi at the 2027 G20 summit in Miami, though he suggested they might attend only as observers, according to Yahoo News.
A three-way summit request fits a month-long pattern in which Putin's own envoys have described his overtures toward Trump as leverage rather than genuine flexibility, with Moscow repeatedly leaving such claims unconfirmed. Bringing Xi into the request adds a new element after weeks in which the Trump-Xi channel produced trade and AI headlines without touching the war. That makes this read as an attempt to use the China relationship to reframe Ukraine diplomacy, rather than a sign Russia's negotiating position has shifted. Given the repeated gap this cycle between announced diplomatic process and confirmed terms, the request itself carries little weight until Washington or Beijing responds concretely.