US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin next Thursday in an unprecedented three-way summit, the White House announced. The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

A senior US official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Trump plans to focus on the US war with Iran and to push for a trilateral agreement limiting the nuclear arsenals of all three countries. The war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, will not be on the agenda, the official said, because Washington is pursuing "a completely different track" in negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow, one in which "China is not part."

The talks follow the expiry last February of the New START arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which left the world's two largest nuclear arsenals unconstrained for the first time in more than half a century. Trump had rejected a Russian proposal to extend the treaty by a year, calling instead for a "new and updated" deal that includes China.

The official described the meeting as a starting point for nuclear talks and said no immediate agreements were expected. The gap between the three arsenals remains wide: Pentagon estimates put China's stockpile at more than 600 warheads, against more than 5,000 each for the United States and Russia, a disparity that has previously left Beijing uninterested in arms control pacts.

US-China ties have warmed somewhat since a trade truce last year, despite differences over Iran, while Trump has sought closer contact with Putin even as Moscow deepens its partnership with Tehran. Analysts say the summit is unlikely to yield major breakthroughs, expecting its significance to be largely symbolic.