U.S.-China Relations
NextFin News - House Speaker Mike Johnson said he spoke over the weekend to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and both told him the United States is planning trilateral negotiations over Ukraine — the clearest senior-level confirmation yet that Washington is moving from envoy shuttle diplomacy toward a structured three-way negotiating format. The disclosure, made as the administration's special envoys completed a week of back-to-back meetings in Oslo and St. Petersburg, sets up a potential turning point in a war that has ground on for more than four and a half years without a significant diplomatic breakthrough.
But the word "trilateral" is doing two different jobs at once, and the gap between them is the real story. One track is technical and includes Ukraine: US, Russian and Ukrainian teams meeting in the first half of November, most likely in Abu Dhabi, to discuss a post-war security system. The other is political and excludes Ukraine: a hypothetical summit of the US, Russia and China at the leader level, floated by Vladimir Putin and described by the Kremlin as having no agreed agenda. The first is a negotiation format. The second is a potential reordering of who gets to decide European security.
The Situation: A Weekend Confirmation After a Month of Shuttle Diplomacy
Johnson's account is the first senior-level US confirmation that trilateral talks are being planned at the top of the administration. He said his weekend conversations with Trump and Rubio left him with the understanding that the format is now in motion. Coming after a week in which Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met separately with Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo and with Putin at St. Petersburg's Constantine Palace, the statement converts a series of bilateral shuttles into something closer to a coordinated negotiating track.
The technical-level meeting has already taken shape. A US official said Witkoff and Kushner proposed a trilateral session at the team level between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, with the subject being a security architecture for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends. The Kremlin's foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, said Putin informed Witkoff that Russia was "in principle" ready to resume trilateral negotiations on the main topic around November 10, and that the talks could be held in Abu Dhabi. The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, later confirmed the next round is planned for the first half of November in Abu Dhabi and "will take place in a trilateral format."
Both sides are publicly staging readiness. Zelensky, addressing the Hudson Institute, said Ukraine had an agreement for a trilateral meeting "at the team level" and that "the plan is to meet in the first half of November and as early as possible, of course, but we are ready to meet any day – even tomorrow." He added that a meeting planned for October did not happen because Russia "came up with another reason not to meet." Ushakov, for his part, called the Oslo proposals of "little real value" before later softening to say Moscow was not "fully satisfied" but saw a step in the right direction. That is the familiar choreography of a negotiation neither side wants to be blamed for stalling.
The timing matters for a second reason. The United States has already mediated three rounds of talks earlier this year — two in Abu Dhabi in late January and early February, and a third in Geneva in mid-February — without producing a deal. A fourth round, now being framed as "trilateral," would be the first since that sequence stalled. The question is whether the format change changes the substance, or merely the label.
Putin has already narrowed what the talks are allowed to be. In a televised interview aired late Thursday, he said any trilateral talks should focus on the long-term security arrangements for a final peace deal, not a "short" truce. That framing is not incidental: it steers the conversation away from an immediate ceasefire — which would freeze the front lines where they stand — and toward a comprehensive settlement in which territory, neutrality and security guarantees are all on the table at once. It is the more ambitious path, and the one with more ways to fail.
Analysis: Why the Format Is the Message
Trilateralism is not neutral. Who sits in the room determines whose interests are represented at the drafting table, and a format that looks like a procedural detail can quietly settle the outcome before the first substantive paragraph is written.
The Technical Track: Cyclical, Not Breakthrough
The US–Russia–Ukraine technical track is best read as cyclical: another round in a pattern of talks that have repeatedly failed to convert contact into agreement. The evidence is in the record. Three rounds earlier this year produced no deal. An October meeting was scheduled and then did not take place. The Oslo proposals were dismissed as containing little of real value. Each step forward in scheduling has been matched by a step backward in substance.
That pattern has a mechanism. The two sides are negotiating over territory that Russia controls on the ground and that Ukraine is unwilling to concede on paper. Moscow has repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals that would freeze the front without recognizing its gains, while demanding that Kyiv cede the partially occupied Donbas — territory Russian forces have been unable to capture militarily. Ukraine has agreed to multiple US ceasefire proposals but cannot accept a settlement that ratifies occupation. As long as the gap is territorial and existential, a change in the number of parties at the table does not close it.
Rubio's own framing points in the same direction. He described the Witkoff–Zelensky meeting as "positive, nothing unexpected, nothing surprising," and said the envoy would now carry the ideas to St. Petersburg to "see if we can make some progress." That is the language of a process in motion, not of a process near conclusion. When a senior official's most specific comment is that nothing was surprising, the market for breakthroughs should stay thin.
"My understanding from the information he provided to me and the readout I got from it, is that it was positive, nothing unexpected, nothing surprising, and he'll now, armed with those ideas, be able to go to St. Petersburg and share them with the Russian side, and let's see if we can make some progress."
Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, describing the Witkoff–Zelensky meeting.
There is also a reason to expect the cycle to persist that has nothing to do with territory. Both Kyiv and Moscow benefit from appearing ready while the other side hesitates. Zelensky's "ready to meet any day – even tomorrow" is a negotiating position as much as a statement of fact: it puts the onus for delay on Russia. Ushakov's "in principle" readiness for November 10 does the same in reverse. Until one side needs the meeting more than it needs the appearance of readiness, the cycle is self-sustaining.
The Leader Track: Where the Structural Risk Lives
The second track is different in kind. A US–Russia–China leaders' summit on Ukraine, discussed without Ukraine or Europe in the room, would be a structural shift in how the war is managed. It would move the center of gravity from a US–European–Ukrainian coalition negotiating with Moscow to a great-power condominium in which the three nuclear-armed states set the terms and the parties to the war are consulted afterward.
Rubio has publicly welcomed the idea. Speaking in India, he said a potential summit would be "a very positive thing for the world" and that Trump had "expressed an openness to do it for the United States, Russia, and China at the leader level to have a conversation about things like arms control." He framed it as risk reduction among the world's largest nuclear arsenals: "I think the world is a safer place when the leaders of the most powerful nuclear arsenals in the world are at least communicating with one another."
That framing is revealing. Arms control is not the war. Folding Ukraine into an arms-control conversation among the three nuclear powers changes the subject from territorial integrity to strategic stability, and in doing so changes who the relevant parties are. Europe and Ukraine become stakeholders in a settlement negotiated over their heads.
The Kremlin has been careful to keep the summit hypothetical. Peskov confirmed that the possibility was raised but said no specific proposals or agreements had been discussed, and Russian state media reported there was no agreement in place. That hedging is itself a signal: Moscow wants the option of a great-power summit without committing to a format that might produce nothing. The proposal emerged from a report that Putin had suggested a trilateral meeting next month on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit in China — a venue that would put the meeting on Beijing's turf and make China a host rather than merely a participant.
The Second-Order Question: Who Writes the Security Architecture
The first-order effect of trilateral talks is obvious: more meetings, more headlines, and a temporary reduction in escalation risk while diplomats are in the room. The second-order effect is what the meetings decide about the post-war order, and that is where the two tracks diverge.
If the technical track dominates, the security architecture for Ukraine is written by Ukraine, with US backing and European input, and the negotiation is about borders, guarantees and enforcement. If the leader track dominates, the architecture is written by the three nuclear powers as part of a broader strategic bargain, and Ukraine's security becomes one line item in a larger ledger that includes arms control, sanctions relief and spheres of influence.
That distinction is what defense markets and European capitals are really watching. A settlement that restores a version of Ukrainian sovereignty with Western security guarantees leaves the European defense buildout intact — the multi-year rearmament programs across NATO were justified by a threat that would not disappear with a ceasefire. A settlement negotiated as a great-power condominium, by contrast, carries the risk that European defense spending is pressured from two directions: a reduced threat perception and political demands from Washington to contribute less once a deal is signed.
Trump has already telegraphed that pressure. He told Zelensky that the EU is "tired of spending" on Ukraine and urged a deal, while warning that "Russia is a big machine. They just keep grinding forward. They have an unlimited supply of people." That is not the language of a mediator committed to Ukraine's maximal position. It is the language of a mediator who believes time favors Russia and who wants the war priced and settled before the political bill grows larger.
There is a historical analogy worth holding lightly. The end of the First World War was negotiated at Versailles by the victors with the defeated largely excluded; the interwar security order collapsed in part because the parties with the strongest incentives to overturn it had no stake in writing it. A Ukraine settlement negotiated without Ukraine would carry a similar enforcement risk: the side that feels imposed upon has little reason to comply once the pressure to sign has passed. That is the structural risk inside the leader-level track — not that a meeting happens, but that a bad meeting produces a fragile document.
The Adversarial Case: Maybe the Format Really Is Different This Time
The strongest case against the skeptical read is that the format genuinely changes the incentives. In the earlier rounds, the United States negotiated with each side separately and carried messages back and forth. A trilateral room removes the game of telephone: proposals are stated once, objections are heard directly, and ambiguity about what the other side actually said is reduced. That alone can unlock movement that bilateral shuttles cannot.
There is also a real interest alignment that did not exist at the start of the year. Russia has signaled readiness to talk about a post-war security system rather than only ceasefire lines. Ukraine has agreed in principle to trilateral talks and says it is ready to meet. The United States has both envoys actively engaged and a president who has made ending the war a central commitment. When all three parties are publicly committed to the same table, the burden of proof shifts to the skeptics.
That case is serious, but it rests on a fragile premise: that the parties want the same meeting. They do not. Kyiv wants a meeting that produces security guarantees and a path to reclaiming territory. Moscow wants a meeting that ratifies its gains and limits NATO. Washington, on the evidence of Trump's own comments, wants a deal signed before the political cost of the war rises further. Three parties at one table with three incompatible objectives is still three parties with three incompatible objectives — only now with a shared photo opportunity.
The falsifying signal is concrete. If the November technical meeting produces a signed framework — a ceasefire document, an agreed security architecture, or a joint statement with specific commitments rather than procedural language — then the cyclical-stalemate read is wrong and the format has done real work. If the meeting is postponed again, or produces only an agreement to keep talking, the pattern holds.
Conclusion: What to Watch, and What It Would Mean
The immediate implication is for the assets most sensitive to war outcomes. Defense contractors have rallied on escalation rhetoric and sold off on peace headlines through this cycle; a credible move toward a signed settlement would pressure the peace premium that has supported the group, even as replenishment demand for depleted munitions inventories provides a floor. European defense names, whose valuations embed a multi-year rearmament thesis, are more exposed to a durable de-escalation than US primes with large non-Ukraine backlogs. Energy markets would react to the fate of sanctions, not just the fighting: a settlement that lifts restrictions on Russian energy would be a supply shock with a different distribution of winners than a ceasefire that leaves the sanctions regime intact.
Split by time horizon, the picture is mixed. In the short term, the announcement of a trilateral format is likely to reduce tail risk — the probability of a sudden escalation spike falls while diplomats are actively engaged. Over the medium term, the outcome depends entirely on which track dominates: a technical settlement with Ukrainian participation supports a soft landing for defense and European risk assets; a great-power summit without Ukraine reintroduces a different kind of volatility, because a settlement imposed from above is harder to enforce and easier to break. Over the long term, the structural question is whether European security is written by Europeans and their allies, or by a condominium of nuclear powers. That is the decision that will outlast any single meeting.
The scenarios are straightforward. In the base case, the November technical meeting takes place, produces procedural language and an agreement to continue, and the war grinds on with intermittent diplomacy — the cyclical read confirmed. In the upside case for risk assets, a framework emerges that separates the ceasefire from the territorial question, allowing fighting to stop while the harder issues are deferred. In the downside case, the leader-level track advances without Ukraine's buy-in, Europe fractures over the terms, and the settlement becomes a source of new instability rather than an end to the old one.
The signal to watch is not the meeting itself but its output. Procedural statements mean the cycle continues. Specific, signed commitments mean the structure has changed. And the single observation that would falsify the skeptical thesis here is a joint document from November that Ukraine signs voluntarily and Russia implements — because that would prove the format, not just the participants, had finally done its job.
Trilateral talks are a format, not a verdict. The risk is not that the room gets bigger; it is that the room gets smaller, and the people left outside it are the ones the war is about.
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