Trump, Xi and Putin to hold first three-way summit in Shenzhen, White House says

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will hold the first three-way meeting of US, Russian and Chinese leaders, at a summit in Shenzhen next week, the White House said on Friday.

The three will meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern Chinese city, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.

Trump wants to talk about reducing nuclear arsenals. "He will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world," Wales said, and he believes the proliferation is "very dangerous".

US officials said Trump will also bring up the war in the Middle East. Russia's war in Ukraine is not expected to be on the agenda: Washington has a "whole other track" of negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow aimed at ending that war, they said, referring to talks US envoys have held in recent days with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. "China is not really a part of that track," one official said.

Zelensky has warned that the Shenzhen meeting could prove a Yalta-like "redistribution of spheres of influence". The comparison refers to the 1945 Yalta summit, where Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin laid out the post-war settlement and new territorial boundaries in Europe.

Trump will also hold a bilateral working lunch and meeting with Xi on Thursday, their fourth meeting since the US president's return to power last year. He is not scheduled to have a separate one-on-one with Putin.

Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk will accompany Trump on the trip to China but will not be involved in the meeting with Xi and Putin, the officials said.

The US does not plan to discuss export controls on sensitive chip technology. "We do not negotiate American export controls," one official said. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang's resignation over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy is not expected to come up in Trump's meetings with Xi.

Trump leaves Washington on Monday and arrives in the Philippines on Tuesday for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations before heading to Shenzhen.