Putin plans to attend the APEC summit in China and skip the G20 in the US
Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to personally attend the APEC summit in China in November, but will most likely skip the December G20 summit in the United States, which will be hosted by President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg reported this, citing sources close to the Kremlin. According to them, Putin intends to come to the meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Shenzhen. This would be his first in-person participation in an APEC summit since 2017. The Kremlin has not officially confirmed these plans, and Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.
The APEC leaders' summit will take place in Shenzhen on November 18–19. China will chair the organization in 2026, and the meeting will be hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. These dates are also listed in the official APEC calendar.
According to Bloomberg, sources assess the likelihood that Putin would also travel a few weeks later to the G20 summit in the US as extremely low. The meeting of the Group of Twenty leaders is scheduled for December 14–15 and will be held at Trump National Doral in Miami. The US officially confirmed the venue and dates of the summit earlier this year.
Therefore, a potential trip to China could be more important for Moscow from a diplomatic standpoint as well. Russian officials had previously allowed that a trilateral meeting between Putin, Xi Jinping, and Trump could take place on the sidelines of APEC. Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed in early September that Moscow and Beijing had already discussed such a possibility. However, its occurrence will depend, among other things, on Trump's decision regarding participation in the APEC summit.
Kurs earlier wrote that the Kremlin publicly allowed for such trilateral talks. The new Bloomberg information is the first indication that Putin intends to personally come to Shenzhen.
Bloomberg sources also claim that Russian officials do not expect significant progress in negotiations to end the war against Ukraine before the December G20 summit. According to them, Moscow is growing dissatisfied with the results of the work of Trump's representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who participated in contacts regarding the war. These are assessments by unnamed interlocutors of the agency, not officially confirmed by the Kremlin.
Furthermore, Bloomberg's interlocutors raised the possibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appearing at the G20 summit at the last minute. There is currently no official confirmation of his participation.
After the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has personally participated in major international forums significantly less often. His foreign trips are also complicated by an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued in March 2023 in connection with charges of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. At the same time, in recent years Putin has visited China, India, the UAE, North Korea, Vietnam, a number of post-Soviet states, and Mongolia.
