Trump Putin Xi Summit: Is Ukraine on the Shenzhen Agenda?
Kremlin Confirms Trump, Putin and Xi Will Meet in Shenzhen as Washington Keeps Ukraine Off the Agenda
Trump, Putin and Xi meet in Shenzhen on 19 November, the Kremlin confirmed. The US says Ukraine is off the agenda and Iran is on it. China is silent.
In this article
Context
The Kremlin confirmed on Saturday 14 November that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump will meet in Shenzhen on 19 November. Ukraine is not on the agenda of that meeting, a senior US official told reporters on Friday. Two days earlier a Kremlin aide had said the Ukraine settlement would be discussed with Trump in the same city.
“An agreement has been reached to hold a trilateral meeting on the 19th between President Putin, President Xi, and President Trump,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told Russian news agencies. “This meeting will take place in Shenzhen on the sidelines of the APEC summit.” He gave no agenda.
China, the host, has confirmed nothing. Its foreign ministry said on Friday only that it “is in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state”.
Silent Dossier set out the nuclear side of the meeting in Trump to Meet Putin and Xi in Shenzhen for First Three-Way Talks on Nuclear Arms. This piece covers what the three capitals have said since, and where their accounts differ.
Key takeaways
- Washington announced the meeting on 13 November and Moscow confirmed it on 14 November. Beijing has still not said it will take place.
- A senior US official said it “doesn’t seem appropriate” to discuss Ukraine there. Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said on 12 November that the settlement would be discussed with Trump in Shenzhen.
- US officials said Trump will raise nuclear arms and Iran, and that they expect no nuclear agreement.
- The format was reported in October as Putin’s proposal for a discussion of Ukraine, and the Kremlin did not deny it.
What Washington, Moscow and Beijing said
“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,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said on Friday evening, 13 November, in the first official word on the meeting.
Two senior US officials then briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. One said of the nuclear talks: “We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement.” The same official called the session “the beginning of hopefully a conversation that can be productive going forward”.
On China, the official said: “We do think it’s time for China to sort of step up, you know, to the adults’ table, if you will, and have adult conversations about adult things.”
Asked about Ukraine, the official said: “We’ve had many meetings recently with the Russians, but China is not really a part of that track, so it doesn’t seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there.” On the war in the Gulf the official said: “I think the president does intend to talk about Iran in the trilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.”
The officials also said no separate meeting between Trump and Putin is scheduled. Trump is due to hold a bilateral meeting and a working lunch with Xi on Thursday before the three leaders sit down.
Moscow answered the next afternoon. Peskov named the date and the city and said nothing about Ukraine, Iran or a separate meeting with Trump.
Beijing’s last word came on Friday, before the White House call. Asked about the meeting at the foreign ministry’s daily briefing, spokeswoman Mao Ning said: “China is in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state. If there is further information, we will release it in a timely way.” The ministry gave the same answer on 4, 9, 10 and 12 November.
The ministry’s announcement of Xi’s programme, published the same day, said he “will hold a welcome banquet for participating leaders and representatives, and hold bilateral meetings with foreign leaders on the sidelines of the meeting”. It did not mention Trump, Putin or a three-way session.
What is the Trump, Putin and Xi summit in Shenzhen?
It is a meeting of the leaders of the United States, Russia and China, planned for Thursday 19 November in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. No such three-way meeting has been held before.
The occasion is the leaders’ meeting of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which China’s foreign ministry said will be held in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November with Xi in the chair. Russia and the United States are both among APEC’s 21 members. China said on 3 October that it “welcomes President Putin’s attendance”.
Peskov said in September that Putin and Trump had discussed meeting in Shenzhen. In October the three-way format was reported to be Putin’s own proposal, made to Trump as a way to discuss Ukraine, and Peskov did not deny it, as we set out in Putin Wants Trump and Xi in Shenzhen. Trump told reporters on 19 October that he “would do it” and named nuclear weapons as his subject.
The last treaty limiting US and Russian strategic warheads, New START, expired on 5 February 2026. China has refused three-way arms talks for years. A foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, said in August 2025 that expecting China to join them was “neither reasonable nor realistic”.
Trump and Putin last met in person in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August 2025.
Analysis
How the statements connect
On 12 November, after Putin received US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow, Ushakov told reporters, speaking of Trump: “Naturally, the discussion of the whole complex of issues related to the settlement will continue during the planned meeting with him at the APEC summit in Shenzhen.” On 13 November the White House said there would be no one-on-one with Putin and no Ukraine discussion in the three-way room. On 14 November Peskov confirmed the meeting and did not repeat Ushakov’s line.
Peskov had told Russian state television on 8 November that the sides were sketching agenda proposals and that “some items are preferable for one side and are considered entirely inexpedient for another”, in our translation from the Russian.
Moscow has its meeting. On Washington’s account it does not have Ukraine as the subject.
Edgard Kagan, a former US ambassador now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on 13 November that Putin’s aim was to talk to Trump and Xi “in a way that suggests that they’re making decisions on Ukraine, which obviously the Ukrainians and the Europeans don’t like”.
Kyiv said as much in October. Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference on 20 October that a discussion of Ukraine’s future “can be acceptable only when we are at the table”. His foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote then that “Putin has no place at the table with presidents Trump and Xi”. Zelensky’s newest remarks, released on 14 November, dealt with a different channel: he said US negotiators had asked whether Ukraine would leave Donbas in return for NATO membership, which we covered in Will Ukraine Give Up Donbas to Join NATO?
Iran is the item Washington added. Trump said on 8 November, before boarding Air Force One in Florida: “We’re trying to end the war in Iran.” Guo Jiakun said on 9 November that prolonging the conflict “does not serve the common interest of the parties concerned and the international community”. Russia’s foreign ministry said on 14 November, after Sergey Lavrov met his Emirati counterpart in Abu Dhabi, that the two had noted the need for “stable, unimpeded and safe navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”, in our translation. Tehran has not commented on being discussed in Shenzhen. Our account of where Trump stands on new strikes is in Why Gulf States Asked Him to Wait.
Washington says the meeting is about nuclear cuts, the subject China has refused to discuss in this format. Heather Williams, who directs the nuclear issues project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on 9 November that any joint statement by the three leaders “is still a long shot, mainly because of China’s reluctance to engage in any trilateral format”.
Alexey Maslov, who heads the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University, said on 13 November: “I don’t think we’ll see a Yalta 2.0, as many people foresee, with anyone carving up the world.”
What is not known
No Chinese official has confirmed the three-way meeting on the record. The Kremlin has not said whether Putin will still see Trump separately, or whether Moscow accepts that Ukraine is excluded. No agenda agreed by all three governments has been published.
What to watch
Monday 16 November: China’s foreign ministry is due to hold its next regular briefing, the first since the Kremlin’s confirmation. Trump leaves Washington the same day and is due in Manila on Tuesday for the ASEAN summit.
Wednesday 18 November: the APEC leaders’ meeting opens in Shenzhen. Peskov said on 2 November that preparation for a separate meeting between Putin and Xi was confirmed; no time has been given.
Thursday 19 November: Trump’s lunch with Xi, then the three-way session. Watch whether Trump and Putin talk alone, whether any text is issued, and whether Ukraine appears in the Russian readout after Washington said it would not be discussed.
If the Russian readout mentions Ukraine and the American one does not, the argument over the agenda will have outlasted the meeting.
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