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The White House said Donald Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping plan to meet on the sidelines of a summit in China next week.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told reporters that the historic meeting between the leaders of the United States, Russia and China will take place during Trump's attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen.
"The president has made it clear that, among other issues, he will discuss reducing the world's nuclear weapons. President Trump believes that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is very dangerous," she said.
It is understood that this meeting between the world's largest nuclear-armed countries may also discuss the Iranian issue, but Ukraine will not be involved. Russia has confirmed the meeting and China has yet to respond.
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According to reports from the Associated Press and Reuters, a senior U.S. official who declined to be named said that no agreement was expected to be reached at the APEC talks.
Trump will arrive in Shenzhen later next Wednesday to attend the two-day 21-nation summit. He will also hold bilateral talks with Xi Jinping next Thursday - which will be the fourth meeting between the two since Trump takes office again in 2025.
"President Trump will conclude his trip to China with a trilateral meeting between the heads of state of the United States, China and Russia," Wales said.
She also pointed out that Trump's trip also includes attending the ASEAN (ASEAN) Summit in the Philippines next Tuesday, which will "achieve historic results for the American people and advance U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific region."
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A nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia expired in February this year, depriving the world's two largest nuclear arsenals of a major control mechanism and effectively ending the arms control cooperation that helped ease tensions after the end of the Cold War. In addition, the United Nations has urged both parties to reach a new framework agreement as soon as possible. Yet Trump said he could replace the old pact with a better deal that also includes China, as Beijing continues to expand its nuclear arsenal.
However, at the time, many former senior US officials and analysts told the BBC that winning cooperation between Beijing and Moscow might face significant obstacles and take years.
Xi Jinping hosted Putin and Trump in Beijing within days of each other earlier this year, while the U.S. president hosted the Chinese president in Washington in September.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has become Moscow's key trading partner. The war left Russia isolated and subject to Western sanctions.
However, the United States last month reached a controversial deal to import Russian diesel while suspending sanctions on major buyers of Moscow's oil and natural gas, including China, sparking heightened concern in Europe about the Trump administration's softening of its stance toward the Kremlin.
At the same time, Trump and Xi Jinping tried to show a more relaxed bilateral relationship at their summits in Beijing and Washington respectively this year, but there seemed to be little substantive progress on key issues such as trade, the battle for dominance in artificial intelligence, and Taiwan.
The Iran war is another point of disagreement between the two sides, with Beijing being Tehran's biggest buyer of oil and its top trading partner.
Chinese state media reported on Friday, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, that Xi Jinping would hold "bilateral" talks on the sidelines of the APEC summit, but had not yet mentioned the trilateral talks.
Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media that there had been "signals confirming the readiness of all parties" to hold such talks at the summit.
This article was originally written in English. We used artificial intelligence to assist in translation and was reviewed by BBC journalists before publication. Learn more about how we use artificial intelligence.
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