Trump-Xi-Putin trilateral meeting at APEC: What to expect

A nuclear treaty and the US’s war on Iran are priority topics for China, Russia, US leaders. But Ukraine is unlikely to be raised. US President Donald Trump, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will hold their first trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China’s Shenzhen, the White House has confirmed .

Talks will focus on nuclear proliferation, the White House said. But they come amid significant global turbulence: Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US-Israeli war on Iran and ongoing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. “I think what we’ll see is some pretty impressive photo-ops with a lot of really bombastic rhetoric from Trump,” Simon Mabon, a professor of international politics at the UK’s Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera.

However, he added, the three “collectively or unilaterally, are not able to bring about an end to the conflict in Iran or Ukraine”. A top issue for Russia and the US is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which lapsed in February.