According to WSJ, Putin made the proposal to Trump in a phone call on October 9; on the same day, as the publication writes, the sides agreed on supplies of Russian diesel. Putin proposed holding the summit as part of the APEC meeting on November 18–19 in Shenzhen, China.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that talks about a possible meeting are underway. He said that there is still no clear understanding either of the meeting itself or of its agenda, although all three sides recognize the hypothetical possibility of such a summit.
WSJ writes that Putin had previously proposed a trilateral meeting format with Trump and Xi Jinping, and the current initiative came against the backdrop of changing relations between Moscow and Washington. According to the publication, Moscow passed this proposal to Beijing through diplomatic channels, and China said it would not object to the meeting if Trump supported the idea.
A senior American official told WSJ that Trump has not yet agreed to such a summit, although he may be interested in it given his campaign promise to stop the war in Ukraine. The White House and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not comment on the information about Putin's proposal.
The WSJ article also cites Trump's subsequent statements: on October 9, he said that he had agreed with Putin on supplies of diesel fuel to the American and global markets, and then announced an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine, which applies only to strikes on refineries. At the same time, according to the publication, there are no operating enterprises of this type in Ukraine, and Volodymyr Zelensky later refused to observe the unilateral truce.
After that, Trump intensified his criticism of Zelensky, accused him of strikes on Russian refineries, and called for elections in Ukraine. WSJ also writes that Kyiv faced difficulties in obtaining American intelligence data and in the operation of the Starlink satellite communication system, and Trump canceled the effect of the “hellish sanctions” against Russia under the law of the late American senator Lindsey Graham.
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