President Donald Trump confirmed Monday he would be willing to participate in a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump made the remarks to reporters on the White House’s South Lawn before departing for a midterm rally in Kansas.
“I would do it,” Trump told reporters, signaling a notable openness to high-level diplomatic engagement with two of America’s most significant geopolitical rivals.
Trump clarified that the proposed summit would not center primarily on the war in Ukraine, instead framing it as a forum for broader strategic discussions.
“Not so much on Ukraine because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine, they haven’t been doing much, and the same with China,” Trump said. “We would have it to talk about weapons and denuclearization.”
Trump’s remarks followed a Wall Street Journal report revealing that Putin had proposed a trilateral meeting during a phone call with Trump earlier this month, with Ukraine as the primary agenda item.
That same call reportedly led to Trump announcing a decision to waive sanctions on Russia to allow the purchase of diesel fuel, a move framed as part of an effort to lower domestic diesel prices ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump further suggested the summit would likely cover issues beyond security, including trade, and indicated that China would be the probable host nation for such a gathering.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha pushed back sharply against reports of the potential meeting, drawing a clear distinction between formats that could help end the conflict and those that could prolong it.
“A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, the US, and Russia could help end the war sooner. A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the US would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war,” Sybiha wrote.
Sybiha’s statement underlines the deep concern in Kyiv that a summit excluding Ukraine could effectively legitimize Russia’s position and undermine ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring the war to a close.
The prospect of a Trump-Putin-Xi summit would represent an extraordinary convergence of global power and a significant shift in American foreign policy, with potentially far-reaching consequences for international security frameworks.
