MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could hold a three-way meeting on the sidelines of next month’s APEC summit in China. The Putin Trump Xi trilateral meeting came up in talks, but no proposals or agenda have been discussed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented after being asked about a report in The Wall Street Journal which said that Putin had proposed such a meeting to discuss how to end the conflict in Ukraine.
“Given that all three heads of state may potentially take part in the summit in China, the subject of such a hypothetical meeting was indeed raised. It was raised, but no specific proposals or agreements were discussed or put forward by anyone, either regarding the meeting itself or the possible agenda and content of that meeting,” Peskov said.
Ukraine objects
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha criticised the idea of such a summit. “A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, the US, and Russia could help end the war sooner. A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the US would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war,” he said on X.
Peskov, who told reporters on a daily conference call that the US was continuing its mediation efforts to resolve the conflict and that Russia appreciated those efforts, said it was obvious that Ukraine would need to be involved in any final peace deal.
“Of course, a final settlement is impossible without the participation of someone in Kyiv who is prepared to take responsibility,” he said.
The last US-mediated peace talks took place in February before the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. Ukraine and Russia remain as far apart as ever when it comes to the terms of any possible peace deal. Dawn carried the Kremlin’s remarks on Monday evening.
A crowded diplomatic calendar
The APEC summit in China would be a rare setting where all three leaders could be present at the same time, which is presumably why the idea surfaced at all. But Peskov’s own caveats were heavy: the subject was raised, nothing was proposed, and no agenda exists.
The timing also matters. Feature Pakistan reported on Monday that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi used the 8th Global Security Forum in Doha to highlight Pakistan’s efforts to keep the United States and Iran at the negotiating table, arguing that “winning peace” mattered more than winning war. Separately, Feature Pakistan covered Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Tehran amid rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz.
Those threads show how many separate tables now exist, from US-Iran and Russia-Ukraine to the Houthi crisis, and how few of them overlap. The US diplomatic calendar is equally full: Trump has endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s election and pledged to eliminate the Iran threat, keeping Washington’s mediation role under scrutiny from all sides. A Putin-Trump-Xi meeting would be a different table entirely: three permanent Security Council members discussing Ukraine without Ukraine at it. That is precisely why Kyiv objected so quickly, and why Peskov felt obliged to add that no final settlement is possible without the participation of someone in Kyiv.
For now, the meeting exists only as a “hypothetical” in the Kremlin’s own words: raised, but proposed by no one.
