Trump, Putin and Xi Set for Historic Shenzhen Summit as Nuclear Arms Top the Agenda

SHENZHEN — The three most powerful leaders in the world are expected to sit down together next week in Shenzhen, where President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold three-way talks on nuclear arms, the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and artificial intelligence on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

The White House has confirmed that Trump plans to raise nuclear-arms cuts with Putin and Xi on Thursday, in what would be the first joint meeting of the three leaders. Down-to-the-wire negotiations over the encounter have not yet produced a settled agenda or format, according to two people familiar with the planning, but the meeting itself is expected to go ahead in the southern Chinese city hosting this year's APEC summit.

Expectations are deliberately low. A senior Trump administration official said Washington does not expect to reach any kind of agreement on nuclear issues, adding only that it was time for China to step up and talk about the topic. The gathering's significance, officials and analysts say, lies less in any deal it might produce than in the fact that it is happening at all.

Three leaders, three agendas

Each man arrives in Shenzhen with a different objective. Putin sees a chance to secure an agreement to end the war in Ukraine on his terms, and Moscow has pushed for the conflict to be part of the conversation. Trump, battered by his party's recent electoral losses, sees a moment for the history books, with possible movement toward a three-way agreement on nuclear arms control. For Xi, the meeting is an unpredictable gathering full of risks.

Trump's domestic position shapes his interest in the trip. The Democrats retook both houses of Congress in the November 3 midterms, and the president will face a Democratic-controlled Congress next year. Aides and former officials say he may be seeking wins abroad, and an agreement on arms or help ending the war with Iran could burnish his legacy.

"The president will undoubtedly be seeking to use this trip to reassert leadership, authority, demonstrate his statesmanship capabilities, and essentially show off on the international stage," said Kurt Tong, a former senior State Department official dealing with East Asia, now a managing partner at the Asia Group consultancy.

The nuclear arithmetic

The numbers explain why the arms-control conversation is so difficult. Russia and the United States each possess more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, while China has around 500, although Beijing is rapidly expanding its arsenal. China considers itself a nuclear underdog and has long resisted being drawn into the kind of limits Washington and Moscow negotiated with each other.

"This is something the Chinese hate," said Edgard Kagan, a former senior Biden White House official for East Asia now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think it's fair to say the Chinese do not want arms control discussions with the United States. And they certainly don't want to do it with the United States and Russia, because it suggests that they accept the framing that they are now a major nuclear power that should be subject to similar restrictions."

Chinese academics interviewed by Reuters called Trump's suggestion of nuclear talks a nonstarter for Beijing. A spokesperson for Beijing's embassy in Washington said only that China was in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state, and had nothing to share at the moment. Russia's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

A new Yalta?

The proposed meeting has drawn comparisons, particularly in Russia, with the 1945 Yalta Conference between the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, which formalised spheres of influence and set the stage for the postwar order. For Russian nationalists, the prospect of an updated version has generated excitement, potentially opening the door to an agreement to end the four-year-old Ukraine conflict in a manner that would favour Moscow.

"It shows who is important in the world: We are, China and the West," Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin told Radio Sputnik this week. "It's deeply symbolic — it's a confirmation of a multi-polar world that the West denies." Just holding the meeting elevates Russia to the status of a superpower alongside China and the United States, its supporters say.

For the smaller governments not at the table, including Ukraine and Taiwan, the idea of the big powers possibly cutting a private deal without them is a cause of deep unease. Anxiety has spread from Kyiv to Tokyo, according to people briefed on those governments' reactions. "We really don't want this to turn into 'Yalta 2, 3, 4,' with a redistribution of influence," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month. The optics are awkward for China, which was not invited in 1945 and tries to present itself as an advocate for smaller countries.

Ukraine and Iran on the margins

Whether Ukraine is even discussed remains unresolved. Beijing has resisted putting the war on the agenda, according to one of the people briefed on the meeting and a European diplomat, both speaking on the condition of anonymity. A US official said on Friday that Trump was not likely to raise the war in Ukraine and that three-way talks were not the proper forum to do so.

The dispute over the agenda reflects how far apart the three sides remain. Moscow sought a conversation on Ukraine; Beijing resisted; Washington has signalled it would rather keep the focus on nuclear weapons. European governments have meanwhile joined the Ukraine peace talks in a separate track, pressing for a seat at any negotiation that decides the continent's future.

Iran is also expected to feature in the discussions. The United States and Iran remain locked in open conflict, with the limited American strikes on Qeshm Island that Trump publicly confirmed last week still unresolved, and the confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz continuing to threaten global energy supplies.

What happens next

The gathering comes as the leaders converge on Asia for a week of summitry. The ASEAN summit is under way in Manila, where Trump is also expected to meet regional leaders, before the APEC gathering in Shenzhen. "Suggestions are being exchanged regarding a possible agenda," Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told reporters on Monday. "In any case, the meeting will certainly be interesting. And, of course, it will capture the attention of people all over the world."

That is also Trump's hope. The meeting would be his latest in a series of diplomatic spectacles over his nearly six years as president, including his prior meetings with Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. None of those meetings produced a breakthrough, and the prospects for any grand bargain emerging from Shenzhen are slim.

But the symbolism alone will be hard to ignore. Three leaders, three nuclear arsenals, one room — and a world watching to see whether the conversation produces anything more than a photograph. For Ukraine, for Taiwan and for the smaller nations watching from the sidelines, the question is not only what the three men agree on, but what they might agree on about them.