Trump says he has not agreed to a meeting with Putin and Xi but would hold one on denuclearization, after WSJ report of Ukraine summit proposal

As of 4:24 p.m. ET, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026

President Donald Trump said Monday that he has not agreed to a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but that he would be willing to take part in one. Asked by a reporter, as he left for a midterm campaign rally in Kansas, whether he had agreed to a three-way meeting with Putin and Xi to talk about Ukraine, Trump said, "No, but I would ... I would do it. Not so much for Ukraine," adding that "Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine."

"We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization," Trump said. "We would schedule a meeting based on the denuclearization." Asked later whether he would meet Xi and Putin to discuss ending the war without Zelenskyy, he said, "Anything I can do to end the war, whether somebody's there or not," and said he would be in China in November.

When a reporter told him that Zelenskyy had said he was "on the wrong side of history," Trump replied, "Zelenskyy doesn't know what he's talking about," and said the Ukrainian leader "should have had this war settled a long time ago." "I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine," Trump said.

No meeting of the three leaders has been agreed, and no date or venue has been announced by the White House, the Kremlin or Beijing.

The remarks followed a report by The Wall Street Journal, published at 7 p.m. ET Sunday, that Putin had proposed that he, Trump and Xi meet next month to talk about Ukraine. Citing people familiar with the discussions, the Journal reported that Putin was trying to negotiate an end to the war on terms favorable to Moscow and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would not be included.

CNBC, citing the Journal, reported that Putin raised the meeting in an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump and that it could take place at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier Monday, during a visit to Uzbekistan, that "there's been talks of a meeting. I don't know whether it's been finalized, but the president has been clear," CNBC reported. "The president is open to anything that he can do to help bring a war to an end, if it's possible, and we'll continue to look for opportunities to do that," Rubio said, according to CNBC.

The Kremlin has talked up a three-way meeting before

The idea of a Russia-U.S.-China leaders' meeting is not new. On Sept. 9, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "the possibility of holding a trilateral summit... exists at the APEC meeting in Shenzhen," the Kyiv Post reported, citing the Russian state news agency TASS. He said Putin and Trump had discussed it in a phone call on Sept. 8.

On Oct. 14, Peskov said there was "a shared view that it would be good to hold such a meeting," but that "we do not yet know how well the leaders' schedules align, and we do not yet know what the agenda for such a meeting might be," TASS reported. In the same remarks, Peskov said nuclear arsenals were "not an appropriate topic to bring up" at such a meeting, citing China's position, according to TASS.

Those earlier public remarks did not describe a summit to settle the war in Ukraine without Kyiv, which is what the Journal reported.

On Monday, Peskov said that "given that all three heads of state might potentially attend a summit in China, the topic of such a hypothetical meeting has indeed been mentioned," but that "no substantive proposals or agreements, neither regarding the meeting itself nor its potential agenda and content, have been discussed or put forward by anyone," AFP reported. He said "a final settlement is impossible without the participation of someone from Kyiv who is prepared to take on the responsibility." Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said she had no information about a possible meeting, according to AFP, which reported that the APEC summit is scheduled for Nov. 18-19 in Shenzhen.

Trump on the war

Hours before the Journal's report, Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday at 4:36 p.m. ET that he did not want to "drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table," and said Zelenskyy "doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did." "I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine," Trump wrote. "I WANT THIS WAR END!"