Putin Proposes Trump-Xi Summit on Ukraine at APEC — SkimNews
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- Putin proposed a trilateral summit with Trump and Xi next month to negotiate an end to the four-year Ukraine conflict, with the Kremlin suggesting it be staged on the sidelines of the November 18-19 APEC summit in Shenzhen, the WSJ reported Sunday.
- The proposal surfaced in Putin's October 9 phone call with Trump — the same call that yielded a controversial deal for the US to buy Russian diesel — and any deal reached would reportedly favor Moscow, per people familiar with the discussions.
- Peskov confirmed talks were underway but acknowledged 'no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda,' even as all three parties called such a meeting hypothetically possible.
- A senior US official told the WSJ that Trump has not agreed to the summit but might be receptive, as warming ties with Putin followed Friday's executive order on Moscow sanctions and the diesel announcement.
- Zelenskiy warned that the diesel deal and Trump's sanctions waiver would 'embolden Putin and prolong the war,' putting Kyiv at odds with the diplomatic track now expanding from bilateral to trilateral.
Why it matters: A trilateral Trump-Putin-Xi framework would shift Ukraine's resolution from a bilateral US-Russia negotiation into a great-power arrangement brokered by Beijing, marginalizing Kyiv at the table. Zelenskiy's protest ties the sanctions waiver and diesel purchase directly to prolonging the war — meaning the diplomatic opening comes bundled with US concessions that Ukraine says make the fighting harder to stop.
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