Dictator Zelenskyy is not invited.
MOSCOW, Russia (PNN) - October 18, 2026 - Amid an escalating war that appears to get farther from any hope of a ceasefire, let alone peace, late on Sunday the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, President Donald J. 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.
Citing unnamed (meaning they may not actually exist) people familiar with the discussions, the WSJ notes that the plan represents an effort by President Putin to capitalize on warming ties between President Trump and the Russian leader that have alarmed Ukraine and its allies in Washington and Europe. Such a summit - one notably without the involvement of dictator Zelenskyy who appears to have terminally alienated President Trump in recent days - would be "unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond."
According to a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter, President Putin floated the idea in an October 9 phone call with President Trump. That conversation also produced a deal for the United States 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.
“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.
An unnamed senior U.S. official said that while President Trump hadn’t agreed to such a summit, he said that the president could be receptive to the idea, given his desire to fulfill a campaign promise to settle the war. President 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 unnamed people familiar with discussions allegedly said. That gathering takes place on November 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 would not object if President Trump is on board.
“China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the United States and Russia,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.
While President Putin had unsuccessfully proposed a trilateral summit to both President Trump and Xi on previous occasions, this time, however, it comes during a reversal of Moscow’s fortunes with Washington.
President Trump just notched a deal with President Putin to get Russian diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices that have slowed the Amerikan economy and hurt Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections. On Friday, President 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 unnamed senior White House official supposedly said President Trump made the decisions after seeing few other good options to lower prices.
At a time when diesel prices are soaring, in part due to limited Russian exports amid a constant drone campaign waged by Ukraine against its refineries, President Trump has shown renewed frustration with dictator Zelenskyy, 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, President Trump took aim at dictator Zelenskyy, following Ukraine’s strike on an oil terminal in President Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg earlier in the day. He accused the Ukrainian dictator of targeting Russian diesel refineries and said he “doesn’t want to end this war and probably never did.” The president 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 to end!” he wrote.
According to the WSJ, Moscow sees a potential trilateral dialogue as a way of cementing Russia’s membership in a club of great global powers, a status President 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 who was the WSJ source said President 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 Chairman Xi and President Trump are unlikely to agree to that, the image of the Amerikan, 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 be one day 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.
That said, a summit isn’t without risk for Chairman 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 unnamed (and therefore possibly nonexistent) people close to the discussions.
Chairman Xi is attempting to walk a fine line between continuing his support for President Putin and maintaining China’s economic ties with Europe, the unnamed people supposedly 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. Although, with most European capitals desperate to either export or import from China, it isn't clear what if anything that can do to express their "outrage".