WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Ukraine to end the war while showing eagerness for a three-way summit with China and Russia, prompting speculation that such a meeting could become a "second Yalta Conference" in which great powers set the rules among themselves. At Yalta, a resort city in southern Ukraine, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union decided the future of Germany and Eastern Europe near the end of World War II without the countries concerned at the table.
Meeting reporters at the White House on the 20th, Trump said Russia is a huge country while Ukraine is not, and that the United States had provided Ukraine with an enormous amount of money but had received nothing in return except higher diesel prices. He said it was time for Ukraine to agree to end the war. The remarks amounted to praise for Russia and pressure on Ukraine to accept a settlement.
Concrete moves toward a U.S.-China-Russia meeting are also emerging. Asked a day earlier about the chances of such a summit taking place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Trump said he would willingly do so. The APEC summit will be held in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19. Trump has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Group of 20 summit in Miami in December.
At the same time, a separate three-way summit involving the United States, Russia and Ukraine appears to be in the works, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy strongly objected that his country must be at the negotiating table. U.S. outlet Politico reported that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff would meet Putin on the 21st to convey peace terms for ending the war in Ukraine and to propose a summit among the three countries. Witkoff met Zelenskyy and others in Oslo, Norway, on the 20th to discuss ways to end the war before heading to St. Petersburg, Russia, to meet Putin on the 21st. The move is seen as an attempt by Washington to shift the mood in its recently chilled relationship with Kyiv, though whether Russia will respond in kind remains unclear.