Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next month to talk about Ukraine in an attempt to negotiate an end to the four-year conflict that would favor Moscow, said people familiar with the discussions.
The plan represents an effort by Putin to capitalize on warming ties between Trump and the Russian leader that have alarmed Ukraine and its allies in Washington and Europe. Such a summit—one without the involvement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky —would be unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.
Putin floated the idea in an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, said a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter. That conversation also produced a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel fuel and facilitate its sale on the global market.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that discussions were taking place over a potential meeting.
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“There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
A senior U.S. official said Trump hadn’t agreed to such a summit. Still, the official said the president could be receptive to the idea, given his desire to fulfill a campaign promise to settle the war. Trump had said it would be finished on “day one” of his new term, but he is now approaching nearly two years in office.
The Kremlin has suggested holding the trilateral dialogue on the sidelines of the coming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the people familiar with discussions said. That gathering takes place on Nov. 18 and 19 in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese tech hub.
A potential three-way dialogue on Chinese soil would mark a big step for Xi in his efforts to elevate China’s role as a diplomatic power broker, said analysts who study China. Russian officials proposed the idea to Beijing through diplomatic channels and the Chinese side has indicated it wouldn’t object if Trump is on board, said other people close to recent discussions between Moscow and Beijing.
“China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the U.S. and Russia,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.
The White House declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment
Putin has proposed a trilateral summit to both Trump and Xi on previous occasions, the former Russian intelligence officer said. This time, however, it comes during a reversal of Moscow’s fortunes with Washington.
Trump just notched a deal with Putin to get Russian diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices that have slowed the American economy and hurt Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections. On Friday, Trump halted implementation of sanctions that were to be imposed on Russia under a bipartisan bill he signed last month, drawing criticism from lawmakers , including some of his allies.
The senior White House official said Trump made the decisions after seeing few other good options to lower prices.
The consensus among energy experts is that the Iran war is the primary cause of rising diesel prices and that the amount of fuel Russia has promised to sell wouldn’t move the market much.
At the same time, Trump has shown renewed frustration with Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader must stop strikes on Russian refineries and suggesting that the country needs a new president. U.S.-led efforts to broker an end to the war, meanwhile, have been largely stalled.
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump took aim at Zelensky, following Ukraine’s strike on an oil terminal in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg earlier in the day. He accused the Ukrainian leader of targeting Russian diesel refineries and said he “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
Trump said he was holding off on imposing sanctions because he didn’t want to drive Russia away from the bargaining table. “I WANT THIS WAR END!” he wrote.
Moscow sees a potential trilateral dialogue as a way of cementing Russia’s membership in a club of great global powers, a status Putin has sought since he entered the Kremlin in 2000. The format also excludes from the picture Europe, which the Kremlin sees as its main obstacle to clinching victory in Ukraine.
The former Russian intelligence officer said Putin has broad, if unrealistic, ambitions for the trilateral format as a second Yalta summit, which would divide up the globe into spheres of influence.
Even if Xi and Trump are unlikely to agree to that, the image of the American, Russian and Chinese leaders negotiating the fate of one nation would be a powerful signal. In Taipei, it could reinforce fears that Taiwan’s own future might one day be bargained over in a similar forum—particularly as Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the self-governing democratic island under its control.
The summit isn’t without risk for Xi. Chinese officials have concerns about allowing a geopolitical side show to overshadow their designs to use APEC as a showcase of China’s role in the region, said some of the people close to the discussions.
Xi is attempting to walk a fine line between continuing his support for Putin and maintaining China’s economic ties with Europe, the people said. A trilateral meeting like this could risk drawing China more directly into the Ukraine conflict and provoke a backlash from European capitals already wary of Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com , Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com , Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com