The BLUF - October 20th

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This is Atlas, and you’re reading the Bottom Line Up Front, where we cover the top geopolitical stories from around the world every Tuesday!

Today’s topics:

• Trump Says He Is Open To A Trilateral Summit With Xi And Putin

• Alberta Votes Overwhelmingly to Stay in Canada in Referendum on Separation

• Houthi Missiles Kill at Least 73 Recruits at a Yemen Government Training Camp

Trump Says He Is Open To A Trilateral Summit With Xi And Putin

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump said Monday he would be willing to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that the talks would center on nuclear arms rather than the war in Ukraine. “We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he left for a midterm campaign rally in Kansas. “If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it.”

Trump said trade could come up as well: “I’m sure we’d talk about other things like trade too.”

Two framings in one exchange

Trump first played down Ukraine as the reason to meet. “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much,” he said. Earlier Monday, during a call with U.S. lawmakers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had shown them photos from a Russian strike in the Kharkiv region that killed six people, including a mother and her 1-year-old child, CNBC reported.

Later in the same exchange, asked whether such a meeting could go ahead without Zelenskyy, Trump answered: “Anything I can do to end the war, whether somebody’s there or not.” He also renewed his criticism of the Ukrainian leader. “I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” Trump said.

The idea did not start in Washington. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Putin floated a three-way summit during an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, a call the newspaper said also produced a deal for the United States to buy Russian diesel. The Journal reported that the Kremlin suggested holding it on the sidelines of next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, and that a senior U.S. official said Trump had not agreed to it.

Moscow raises it, then tempers it

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Journal: “There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place.”

On Monday his account was more guarded. “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,” he told reporters. But he said “no substantive proposals or agreements, neither regarding the meeting itself nor its potential agenda and content, have been discussed or put forward by anyone.”

Asked whether Putin could reach a deal without Ukraine, Peskov said: “It goes without saying that a final settlement is impossible without the participation of someone from Kyiv who is prepared to take on the responsibility.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Monday for a meeting of U.S. and Central Asian foreign ministers, part of an Oct. 17-22 trip that continues to India. “I think there’s been talks of a meeting. I don’t know anything’s been finalized,” he told reporters there. “But the president has been clear he’d like the war in Ukraine and Russia to end.”

Beijing keeps its distance

China’s Foreign Ministry was asked directly at its regular briefing on Tuesday whether China would accept Trump’s offer. “I have no information to share at the moment,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, according to the ministry’s transcript.

Beijing has been firm on the subject Trump says he wants to discuss. On Oct. 16, responding to Trump’s comments that Washington was in talks with Russia and China on denuclearization, Mao said, according to the ministry’s English transcript: “China’s nuclear strength is by no means at the same level with that of the U.S. and Russia. It is neither fair, reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the so-called trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage.”

New START, the last treaty limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, ran out in February. The two countries extended it in 2021 “until February 5, 2026,” according to the U.S. diplomatic note. On Feb. 5, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ ... we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.” The treaty capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed long-range missiles and bombers.

Kyiv objects to being left out

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, rejected the idea of a meeting without his country. “A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, the US, and Russia could help end the war sooner. A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the US would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war,” he wrote on X.

The offer follows two recent U.S. actions on Russia. On Oct. 9, the Treasury Department issued General License 135, allowing Russian-origin diesel to be sold and delivered on world markets, including into the United States, until April 7, 2027. On Friday, Oct. 16, Trump signed an executive order waiving nearly all of the sanctions and tariffs in the Russia sanctions law he had signed in September, measures that were due to take effect Oct. 18.

Zelenskyy has criticized the waiver. “This is how Russia responds to the lifting of sanctions and the easing of pressure,” he said Monday. The most recent round of talks among Russia, Ukraine and the United States took place in February, and a round planned for March was postponed, Reuters reported.

The United States, China and Russia are all members of APEC. Its leaders are scheduled to meet in Shenzhen on Nov. 18 and 19.

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