Trump meets Putin and Xi in China to discuss nuclear weapons
No deal expected as New START expired earlier this year.
Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China to discuss nuclear weapons, with the talks taking place for the first time between the three leaders.
The meeting is scheduled for Thursday in Shenzhen during the Apec forum. A senior Trump administration official told Reuters the US does not expect any agreement.
The leaders plan to discuss nuclear disarmament, but China has so far rejected joining such talks with the US and Russia. Beijing argues that Washington and Moscow should speak directly because they have larger stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Russia has the most stored warheads in the world, followed by the United States and China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The New START agreement between the US and Russia expired earlier this year, and it is unclear whether Putin and Xi will take part in disarmament discussions with Trump.
Trump is also expected to raise the US and Israel’s war against Iran. The Ukraine war is not expected to be a topic.
Even if Ukraine is unlikely to be discussed in China, the US and Russia have held several meetings recently. Trump’s emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow and agreed to new meetings, but it remains unclear whether Russia is willing to negotiate an end to the war.
The Moscow meeting followed talks in Abu Dhabi, where the plan had been for Witkoff and Kushner to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin afterwards. Trump previously said after meetings in Oslo that it was time for Ukraine to end the war, Reuters reports.
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Source:
VG