The latest turn in Russia-US relations has shocked Kiev, outraged the EU, provoked discontent among a considerable number of politicians in the US, and left many observers around the world perplexed.

The Trump administration’s sudden decision to suspend sanctions on Russian diesel supplies appears to contradict its recent actions, including the adoption of tough new sanctions legislation intended to increase pressure on Moscow, and while some attribute the reversal to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, others see the beginnings of a new policy, or evidence of a fundamental change in the administration’s approach to Ukraine.

To understand what’s happening, however, we must look beyond the peculiarities of the US president’s public behavior. Trump’s extravagance, which frequently borders on the absurd, often conceals a relatively clear set of objectives, but whether those objectives are sensible is another question.

The most likely explanation for his latest reversal lies in domestic American politics, as the congressional midterm elections are less than a month away, and the Republican Party faces difficult prospects. Trump maintains an air of indifference, but losing control of both houses of Congress would condemn him to two years of political confrontation and considerable frustration.

He probably understands that there’s little prospect of fundamentally improving the economic situation, particularly consumer prices, before voters go to the polls, so for now, the emphasis is on psychological impact.

Russia isn’t the first country Washington has approached about increasing fuel supplies to international markets, and the more agreements Trump can announce, the more opportunities he has to proclaim that the White House is working tirelessly to protect ordinary Americans from rising prices.

The expectation, presumably, is that voters will forget how much of the present difficulty stems from Trump’s own actions in the Persian Gulf.

We shall soon discover whether this approach works, but there’s nothing particularly irrational about it, and Trump is pursuing a deliberate political objective. The fact that his latest decision contradicts previous statements doesn’t trouble him because he’s long operated on the assumption that words have value at the moment they’re spoken, but impose few obligations thereafter.

What does this mean for Russia, beyond the welcome prospect of additional budget revenues?

Colleagues from the Vatfor project have identified an important development, in that for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, the US president has made a significant decision regarding Russia without making Ukraine the determining consideration.

Until now, the Ukrainian question has been inseparable from virtually every aspect of Washington’s policy towards Moscow, but this time, not only has it been set aside, the decision directly contradicts Kiev’s interests at a particularly difficult moment.

Hence the indignation of the Ukrainian leadership, as from its perspective, the Americans have behaved unfairly.

There are probably several reasons for this change, but the principal one appears to be Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s unwillingness to accommodate Washington’s demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure.

The strikes have become one of Kiev’s principal instruments of warfare, and American requests to curtail them have largely gone unanswered.

Trump, meanwhile, has become fixated on Russian oil supplies as a means of addressing rising fuel prices, and their importance shouldn’t be exaggerated, even if additional Russian supplies alone are unlikely to transform the global market. Nevertheless, Trump has evidently decided that Zelensky bears responsibility for aggravating the situation.

Once the US president reaches this conclusion, persuading him otherwise becomes extremely difficult. Therefore, for the moment, Kiev’s objections have simply been disregarded.

The more consequential question concerns American intelligence assistance, because to stop, or at least substantially reduce, Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets, Washington would have to restrict the intelligence it provides to Kiev, and much of this information amounts, in practical terms, to targeting assistance.

Trump already demonstrated willingness to use this instrument when around a year and a half ago, he temporarily suspended intelligence cooperation for several days to put pressure on the Ukrainian leadership.

A longer interruption would be a different matter and it would represent a genuine change in Washington’s approach to the conflict, effectively distancing the US from its Ukrainian partner, but whether Trump is prepared to take this step is uncertain.

There is, after all, an extensive informal coalition interested in maintaining the present course, and it includes the US defense industry, increasingly influential technology companies, European governments, and their political allies in Washington. Trump encountered these forces during his previous attempt to advance his preferred settlement following the Anchorage summit, and that initiative ultimately produced little, so it remains to be seen whether the present effort will fare any better.

If Washington proves unwilling to exert sustained pressure on Kiev, the latest initiative could gradually lose momentum, and this is especially likely after the congressional elections, when the immediate political value of announcing presidential achievements will diminish.

The decisive question, therefore, is whether the US leadership can compel its partners to move in the direction it considers necessary, and if it can, an opportunity for further negotiations on a settlement could emerge.

There’s also a second conclusion which is particularly important for Russia, because Washington’s latest actions offer a glimpse of how Russia-US relations could develop after the military phase of the conflict ends.

The enormous collection of sanctions imposed on Russia is unlikely to disappear, and removing them would be exceptionally difficult, both procedurally and politically, given too many restrictions have become embedded in law and institutional practice.

Instead, the sanctions will probably remain formally in place, while decisions about their enforcement are taken according to circumstances; thus, when a particular restriction conflicts with US interests, Washington could suspend its application, but when the circumstances change, it can be restored.

In other words, sanctions will become instruments to be activated or deactivated according to immediate political and economic requirements, rather than permanent expressions of an immutable policy, and this is an important distinction between the American and European approaches.

The Americans generally display a greater degree of pragmatism as they are perfectly capable of proclaiming principles with great conviction, abandoning them when circumstances demand it, and returning to the same principles when doing so becomes convenient. European governments, by contrast, have increasingly bound themselves to political commitments from which retreat is both institutionally complicated and publicly embarrassing.

For Moscow, understanding this difference will be essential when constructing its future relationship with Washington now that the confrontation over Ukraine has reached a stage at which its consequences extend far beyond the immediate military and territorial questions.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it will help determine the structure of future political relations between Russia and the various components of the Western world, and while that structure is already beginning to emerge, its geometry remains unsettled, and the lines are still moving.

RT

The world stands at a critical turning point and, as President Xi Jinping has noted, “changes unseen in a century are accelerating.” After it was confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the APEC Summit in Shenzhen, China, scheduled for 18-19 November 2026, expectations have grown that a trilateral meeting of the three most powerful heads of state may mark a proactive strategic recalibration required by the exigencies of the current international situation.

This meeting may come as a historic adjustment of the global structural transformation and the upgrading of the major powers’ relations eighty years after the formation of the Yalta system. Hopefully, the interaction between the presidents of the three major powers will not be the “G3 joint management of the world” as hyped by Western media, but emerge as a new ‘Shenzhen International System’, a model that will operate in parallel with the UN-centered multilateral system and inject certainty into the turbulent world.

The Shenzhen Trilateral Meeting as a Product of Thorough Preparation and an Urgent Imperative of the Times

Face-to-face meetings between presidents of major powers are never spur-of-the-moment events; they are the cumulative product of intensive diplomatic efforts, Track II dialogues, and successive bilateral exchanges. Over the past year or so, bilateral communication among China, the U.S., and Russia—including various dialogues, shuttle diplomacy by special envoys, and telephone conversations—has steadily advanced, with the parties repeatedly sounding out each other’s bottom lines and exchanging views on global pressing issues.

Visits and statements made by top-level officials in 2026 point to the high probability of a trilateral meeting of the Chinese, U.S., and Russian heads of state. On 4 February—the day marking the start of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar—President Xi Jinping held separate telephone conversations with President Putin and President Trump. During the third week of May, President Trump and President Putin visited Beijing in succession to meet with President Xi Jinping. On 23-25 September, President Xi visited the United States. On 1 October, President Putin publicly stated at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club that a trilateral summit was possible, provided the agenda was right.

The think tank I am affiliated with has frequently organized trilateral dialogues among scholars and former officials from China, the U.S., and Russia in recent years. Multiple rounds of exchanges yielded a clear consensus that if major powers engage in a spiraling vicious rivalry, no single party will remain unscathed. This realization has laid a solid conceptual foundation for the leaders’ meeting during the APEC Summit in Shenzhen.

There is also a distinct sense of urgency. The current global order is in a state of a severe ‘entropy increase.’ The protracted Russia-Ukraine conflict is draining the resources and fracturing Eurasia’s security architecture. The Middle East remains volatile, with the risk of regional conflicts spilling over their boundaries. Global inflation, supply chain fragmentation, and debt crises are spreading across the Global South. Global problems—such as climate change, AI governance, and nuclear non-proliferation—are not resolved, lacking deep involvement of China, the U.S., and Russia. Bilateral diplomacy is no longer sufficient to address complex cross-regional global challenges.

The intensifying domestic political polarization in the U.S., with partisan wrangling over foreign policy, is draining the nation’s strategic energy; Russia, struggling with geopolitical security pressures, urgently needs stable relations with major powers; and China, currently undergoing a phase of high-quality development, needs a generally stable international environment. While each of these three major powers has its own practical domestic and foreign policy imperatives, they also share a collective responsibility for maintaining global strategic stability.

The Global South hopes that the major powers will manage their differences, halt confrontation, and jointly address existential challenges such as food, energy, and debt security. The world can no longer afford the catastrophic chain reactions resulting from miscalculations by major powers. It is this shared sense of global crisis that urges the need for a summit of the leaders of China, the U.S., and Russia.

The APEC multilateral framework provides a fitting diplomatic setting for the three leaders’ communication: trilateral talks in a multilateral context are generally inapt for striking secret deals or carving out spheres of influence, but instead help focus on the regional and global agenda.

The ‘Shenzhen International System’—a New Paradigm, Eight Decades after Yalta?

The 1945 Yalta Conference laid the groundwork of the post-World War II global order—a system that has endured for over eight decades. Born from the ruins of war, the Yalta international system, rooted in the major powers’ logic of delineating spheres of influence, ultimately created a postwar landscape marked by bipolar confrontation.

While this system maintained peace for a time, it was inherently characterized by power politics, bloc-based antagonism, and the carving up of spheres of influence. After the Cold War, attempts were made to replace the bipolar structure with U.S. unipolar hegemony; however, this experiment in unipolarity ultimately resulted in increased conflict, inequality, and failures in global governance. Over the past eight decades, the underlying logic of the Yalta system has become increasingly ill-suited to today’s multipolar reality.

The historical value of the potential trilateral meeting of China, U.S., and Russia’s leaders—held within the framework of the Shenzhen APEC summit—is that these powers have begun to jointly explore a new order that transcends the outdated mindset of the Yalta system; this marks the starting point for what might be called the ‘Shenzhen International System.’

This system is by no means intended to replace the United Nations or to abandon existing international mechanisms in favor of a new setup. Rather, it would indicate the major powers’ joint intention to reshape the principles of their coexistence and correct the entrenched mindsets inherited from the Yalta era—bloc confrontation and contest for spheres of influence.

Under the Yalta system, the underlying logic of major-power interaction was zero-sum games, alliance-building, and territorial division. By contrast, the Shenzhen trilateral summit may draw a new direction of controllable competition, conflict prevention, policy coordination, and mutual respect for nations’ core interests. The primary value of such a trilateral summit lies in managing the strategic risks associated with major powers, establishing guardrails for crisis communication, and preventing local conflicts from escalating into direct confrontation between major powers.

Furthermore, in the provision of global public goods, the three nations can coordinate their efforts in addressing food security, energy stability, and climate governance. Most importantly, the meeting may acknowledge the objective reality of a multipolar world and diversity of civilizations and development paths; it may move away from drawing lines based on ideology and compelling nations to take sides. The Yalta system was an order born of war, bearing the imprint of power politics; by contrast, the Shenzhen trilateral summit may initiate a reshaping of international order—conducted in a peaceful environment—where major powers voluntarily exercise self-restraint and seek coexistence. This will mark a significant endeavor in international relations history.

It will also signify that the world’s major powers are no longer retracing the historical path of the “WWII victors redrawing the global map,” but intend to jointly maintain fundamental global stability based on the premise of coexistence. The historical significance of this shift will become increasingly apparent to the international community over time. Of course, building a new order paradigm is a long-term process and a trilateral summit is merely the starting point of a long journey that is far from its final destination.

Not a G3, but a New Model of Major-Power Interaction Compatible with Multilateralism

Some Western media outlets and public opinion circles using outdated geopolitical concepts to hype up a so-called ‘G3 bloc’ claim that China, the U.S., and Russia intend to monopolize global affairs. This is a classic Eurocentric understanding of major-power interaction rooted in the old logic of 19th-century alliances and the secret division of spoils. It must be made clear: the trilateral summit of Chinese, U.S., and Russian presidents is not a ‘G3.’

The ‘G3’ concept is essentially a closed clique of a few major powers monopolizing global decision-making, dictating the terms to the rest of the world, demarcating spheres of influence, and compelling other nations to submit. By contrast, the trilateral interaction of China, the U.S., and Russia is presumed to be an open, issue-oriented communication mechanism focused on crisis management.

The primary goal of such communication is to manage mutual conflicts and prevent clashes between major powers, rather than to form an exclusive bloc for joint opposition to other nations. The consensus reached through trilateral interaction will neither supersede the UN Charter nor replace existing multilateral mechanisms such as the G20 or APEC.

While there is room for cooperation, significant competition and differences between the three nations also exist. They will not form a monolithic alliance. China and Russia characterize their relationship as a comprehensive strategic partnership embracing coordination in the new era, not a formal alliance. China and the U.S. seek a constructive, strategically stable relationship based on mutual respect, fairness, and reciprocity. While the U.S. and Russia harbor deep-seated conflicts, they maintain a baseline for crisis management. Thus, the trilateral relationship is a dynamic balance, not a rigid bloc.

The new model of major-power interaction is entirely compatible with multilateralism; the two models are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Multilateralism involves all sovereign states; it is anchored in the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, which respects the sovereign equality of nations and addresses the aspirations of the vast number of developing countries in the Global South.

Stable communication among China, the U.S., and Russia as permanent members of the UN Security Council helps it overcome the current state of paralysis and dysfunction of its multilateral mechanisms. Only by effectively managing the most dangerous bilateral and trilateral risks can major powers hear the voices of small and middle states and respond to the concerns of the Global South.

Trilateral communication among major powers serves as a stabilizer for the multilateral system, not a substitute for it. The outcome of trilateral talks must ultimately be implemented within a global multilateral framework, incorporating the participation of more nations. Crucially, rather than engaging in mere bargaining at the negotiating table, the three major powers must consider the development aspirations of the Global South countries.

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Amidst the current profound global changes, the potential trilateral meeting of the Chinese, U.S., and Russian leaders—held on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Shenzhen—could be a pivotal moment in the history of diplomatic practice. It could remind the world that confrontation, war, and bloc rivalry are not the only historical paths available to major powers. Managing differences, peaceful coexistence, and limited coordination are viable choices.

Of course, we should not be overly optimistic about the prospects. Deep-seated mistrust, ideological biass, and conflicts of interest will continue to test the three nations’ strategic resolve. However, if China, the U.S., and Russia maintain the communication channels established through head-of-state diplomacy, uphold mutual respect, and avoid direct conflict, the new paradigm of major-power relations initiated by the Shenzhen trilateral meeting will take root and grow—offering a rare opportunity for injecting strategic certainty into the turbulent world.