Washington DC - President Donald Trump on Sunday said he will likely meet with Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China during next week's visit to Shenzhen.
Trump told reporters he expects to meet with Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia at an Asia-Pacific summit in Shenzhen, China scheduled for November 18–19.
"Well, I'm going to be going to China," Trump told reporters on Sunday. "And one of the meetings I think will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that'll be interesting."
He added: "We'll talk a lot of things, including Denuclearization, but we'll be talking a lot of things. We're trying to end the war in Iran."
The Kremlin said on October 21 that this first of its kind trilateral meeting is "being prepared."
The comments followed a Wall Street Journal report claiming that Putin wanted the three-way talks to broker a peace deal in Ukraine that would be favorable to Moscow.
Trump is widely criticized for being fond of authoritarian leaders including – but not limited to – Xi and Putin.
Trump's willingness to meet with Putin is a further show of how his administration has worked to end the international isolation Russia experienced after its attempted invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.