The city of Shenzhen in southern China was once a small fishing village nestled on the Pearl River Delta. Today, it’s one of the country’s largest manufacturing hubs. Next month, if Vladimir Putin gets his way, it will serve as the historic backdrop for the carving up of Ukraine.
The Russian President has proposed a meeting with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, his American and Chinese counterparts, on the fringes of the APEC Summit, due to take place there on 18-19 November.
All three men have already confirmed their attendance at the summit, one of the major international gatherings of the year. Now, Trump and Xi must decide whether to sit down with Putin to try to hammer out a Russian peace deal with Ukraine. Note the absence of Ukraine in that potential conversation.
Putin’s latest move, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, shows his determination to take advantage of Trump’s more friendly approach to Russia in recent weeks, as well as his apparent decision to declare almost open hostility towards Ukraine.
After Trump announced an agreement to import diesel from Russia this month, in contravention of US sanctions that he hastily rewrote, followed by his decision to exempt Russia from Congressionally backed sanctions legislation that aimed to punish the Kremlin further, Putin sees his chance.
Trump’s impatience to secure a deal is both written on his face and – this weekend – on his social media accounts. Ukraine, Trump claimed on Sunday, “is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead”.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s President, said last week that he feels betrayed by Trump after the diesel deal and pressure from the US over an energy ceasefire that Russia then immediately broke.
Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor, argued that no talks regarding Ukraine’s future could ever occur without the Ukrainian government being at the table. Most of Europe agrees. The Trump White House, however, seems to have utterly abandoned that idea, with Trump desperate to claim credit for ending the war – irrespective of how much pressure has to be put on Ukraine to accept a lopsided deal.
The US President has also vented against Zelensky’s determination to continue attacking Russian energy infrastructure – and dismissed suggestions that Putin is actively supporting Iran’s military efforts against America.
“Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote, ignoring plenty of evidence that Moscow has provided Iran with satellite targeting data for its strikes on US bases and other targets in the Middle East.
Last week, Trump argued on Truth Social that only “Radical Left Morons and Lunatics” believe that “China and Russia are helping the ‘wonderful’ Islamic Republic of Iran… they have too much to lose, and we would know about it”.
Putin’s meeting would aim to turn the Shenzhen gathering into a modern-day version of the 1945 Yalta conference, where Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill redrew the maps of Europe as the Second World War approached its end. Between them, the three leaders divided up vast swathes of the continent, creating the groundwork for the Cold War.
Trump has spoken often about the prospect of expanding the US’s territory – including by making Canada the 51st state and taking over Greenland. He’s also long been beguiled by the idea of being seen as an equal by Putin and Xi. The concept of a Yalta-style meeting will appeal to his sense of vanity and goal of being remembered as a figure of global historical significance.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the US, China and Russia “acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place”.
For Putin, speed is of the essence. Any agreement sealed in Shenzhen could be handed to Ukraine and its European allies the following month, as a fait accompli, when Trump hosts the G20 Summit at his own golf club in Florida.
European leaders and Trump’s Republican critics are now on notice that they have potentially weeks to repair the relationship between Trump and Zelensky, or things might spiral fast. In fact, it may already be too late to talk Trump out of trying to do a deal with Putin – whether that discussion takes place in Shenzhen next month or further down the line.
It’s not clear how Xi and China feel about the proposed meeting, which could overshadow the rest of the APEC Summit. Beijing has broader ambitions for the gathering, with Chinese media describing it as an effort to “translate the goal of building an Asia-Pacific community into action”.
Meanwhile, Russian officials are hopeful that Shenzhen will forever be associated with the territorial dismemberment of Ukraine, and the US’s further undermining of Zelensky. If it does, Ukraine and its allies may conclude that a new “axis of evil” is forming, with Trump close to its epicentre.