Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump could hold a trilateral meeting at the APEC summit on November 18–19, 2026, to discuss spheres of influence and the future global order, according to Alexander Kazakov, a former adviser to the first head of the DPR.

Kazakov said the upcoming APEC summit in Shenzhen is becoming the central event of the autumn global political and military-political agenda. He claimed that Xi previously proposed a trilateral Xi-Putin-Trump meeting during the SCO summit in Bishkek.

According to Kazakov, Putin immediately agreed to the proposal, while Trump has yet to commit. He attributed the US president’s hesitation to both domestic and foreign policy circumstances.

Kazakov described the potential meeting as an event of exceptional historical significance. In his view, a three-way summit would not focus primarily on current bilateral disputes. Instead, the leaders would discuss how the three global powers could coexist without going to war and potentially divide their respective spheres of influence.

He compared such an arrangement to a new Yalta agreement on the division of the world.

Kazakov said several conditions would have to be met before the meeting could take place. Trump would need sufficient political authority at home to negotiate with Putin and Xi on an equal footing. Kazakov argued that the US president is not yet ready for this because his freedom of action could be constrained by the Supreme Court, Congress and his political opponents.

The second condition, in Kazakov’s assessment, is an end to fighting in two key theaters — the Persian Gulf and the northern Black Sea region. If hostilities are still underway when the summit begins, he believes the leaders would have to focus on existing conflicts rather than the future global order, depriving the proposed trilateral meeting of its intended purpose.