Trump Considers Three-Way Summit With Putin and Xi — SkimNews
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- Vladimir Putin proposed a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping during an October 9 phone call, a plan the Kremlin has confirmed and Beijing has not objected to.
- Donald Trump said he would attend the proposed November summit in Shenzhen if Xi wants it, and described Xi's stance on the Ukraine war as 'very fair.'
- Ukraine's foreign minister warned that such a Russia-China-US summit would only encourage Putin to keep fighting, with critics invoking the historical 'Yalta' conference.
- The analysis argues the summit's geometry would place Xi, not Trump, at the apex, as the host and convener of two closer partners, making the U.S. the 'odd man out.'
- The author contends a genuinely realist approach would involve direct talks between Washington, Moscow, and Kyiv, with Europe consulted, rather than ceding arbitration to China.
Why it matters: The summit would formalize China's role as the great power broker of Eurasia, potentially trading U.S. concessions on Taiwan or tech controls for a Ukraine ceasefire. This excludes the war's primary stakeholders—Ukraine and Europe—from shaping a settlement they would be expected to fund and enforce.
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