Ukraine

Kyiv, September 25, 2026. In Washington, the meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, which concluded on Thursday with closed-door talks in the Oval Office without a joint press conference, is being viewed in Kyiv through a single lens: the leverage the United States could, or could not, exert against Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky set the tone on Tuesday, September 22, in New York, stating that "if [Trump] also gets Xi on board, it could make a difference. Xi has influence over Putin." According to Ukrinform, he urged Trump to involve Xi Jinping in negotiations to end the Russian war against Ukraine.

Kyiv Post notes that Trump now has a new tool: a sanctions law allowing Washington to tax Russia's main trading partners, including China. However, the US President himself tempered its use on Tuesday, in front of Zelensky: "I hope I won't have to use it." The same media outlet points out that Chinese refiners have recently increased their purchases of Russian crude oil, and the ESPO barrel has risen, a sign that Beijing is not turning off the tap.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited by Ukrinform, Trump and Xi did discuss the "Ukrainian crisis", along with the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula, without the statement detailing the content. The two leaders also supported the holding of meetings at APEC in China and the G20 in the United States before the end of the year. Xi advocated, before the talks, for avoiding "conflict and confrontation", preferring a relationship of "competition" rather than "confrontation with a winner and a loser".

Ukrainska Pravda relays an analysis by the Associated Press comparing the welcome given to Xi to that offered earlier to Vladimir Putin: the same excessive red carpet, the same protocol, even the unusual gesture of Trump coming to greet Xi at the foot of the stairs of his plane at Joint Base Andrews. The trade truce, extended until January 10 according to the announcement made by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the time of this welcome, takes center stage; Taiwan, on the other hand, remains without an answer, Trump having refused to answer any questions from journalists on the subject as he left the Oval Office.

For Kyiv, the real stake of the summit is neither protocol nor pandas, but the unanswered question: will Washington really pressure Beijing to abandon Moscow, or will the Trump-Xi relationship remain, as Kyiv Post notes, a matter of commercial interests rather than peace?