Trump, Putin and Xi plan historic joint meeting in China next week, White House says

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are planning to meet on the sidelines of a summit in China next week, the White House has said.

The historic meeting between the respective leaders of the US, Russia and China will take place as Trump attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in the southern city of Shenzhen, spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.

"The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous," she said.

It is understood Iran may also be discussed during the meeting of the world's biggest nuclear powers, but not Ukraine. Moscow and Beijing have yet to comment.

No agreement was expected to follow the talks, an unnamed, senior US official said, according to news agencies AP and Reuters.

Trump will arrive in Shenzhen late on Wednesday for the two-day summit between the 21 member states. He will also take part in bilateral talks with Xi on Thursday - their fourth meeting since the US president returned to office in 2025.

"President Trump will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People's Republic of China, and the president of the Russian Federation," Wales said.

She said Trump's trip, which will also include attending an Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) summit in the Philippines on Tuesday, would "secure historic wins to the American people and advance America's interests in the Indo Pacific".

A nuclear weapons control treaty between the US and Russia expired in February, leaving the world's biggest nuclear arsenals without major guardrails and effectively marking an end to the arms control co-operation that helped resolve the Cold War.

The UN has urged both sides to agree a new framework without delay. Trump however said he could replace the deal with a better agreement that included China, which has been building up its arsenal.

Former senior US officials and analysts told the BBC at the time that seeking Beijing and Moscow's co-operation could create major hurdles and take years.

Xi separately hosted both Putin and Trump in Beijing just days apart earlier this year, while the US president welcomed his Chinese counterpart to Washington in September.

Beijing has become a crucial trading partner for Moscow since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has isolated Russia and left it subject to Western sanctions.

But a controversial US deal to import Russian diesel and the suspension of sanctions targeting the biggest buyers of Moscow's oil and gas - including China - heightened European concern about the Trump administration's softening towards the Kremlin last month.

Trump and Xi have meanwhile sought to project warmer ties at summits in Beijing and Washington this year - though little significant progress appeared to have been made on key issues such as trade, their race for AI dominance, and Taiwan.

The war in Iran has also been a sticking point, with Beijing the largest buyer of Tehran's oil and its largest trade partner.

Chinese state media reported on Friday that Xi would take part in "bilateral" talks on the sidelines of the Apec summit, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, but has not reported on the trilateral meeting.

Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media that there were "signals confirming readiness" for such talks at the summit.

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