Trump Personally Asks China’s Xi to Help End Russia’s War Against Ukraine

US President Donald Trump personally urged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help end Russia's war against Ukraine, leaning on Beijing's influence over Moscow to resolve a war now in its fifth year.

Multiple officials familiar with last month's leaders' summit in Beijing described the exchange to the South China Morning Post, which reported the account on June 1.

During the talks, Trump told Xi that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine had stalled and pressed him to bring Russian leader Vladimir Putin back to the table to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The appeal reflected Washington's need to draw Beijing into efforts to end a war that Trump has made a centerpiece of his foreign policy since returning to the White House last year.

The summit unfolded at a moment of rare battlefield progress for Ukraine, which has regained more ground in recent months than it had ceded in years. A senior Ukrainian commander, Andrii Biletskyi, told Reuters last week that the Russian army was exhausted and incapable of making breakthroughs.

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War in Ukraine

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Even so, Russia last month launched a massive aerial assault on Ukraine, deploying 600 drones and 90 missiles, including the nuclear-capable Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile, and vowed further attacks on the Ukrainian capital.

Direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have largely collapsed since the Istanbul talks in July 2025 ended without a ceasefire. Trump has repeatedly pressed Zelenskyy to reach a deal with Russia, in March urging him to "get on the ball."

The summit's discussions reportedly reached beyond the diplomatic impasse to Putin's conduct of the war, with several accounts indicating Xi told Trump that Putin might come to regret launching the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Beijing publicly rejected that characterization as fabricated, maintaining that it holds an impartial position and has worked to promote peace negotiations.

At the same time, Chinese components remain a crucial part of Russian weapons production. Leaked files have indicated that Western-made chips, routed to Russian factories through Chinese suppliers, continue to surface in the missiles Moscow fires at Ukraine.

The documents point to a procurement chain in which sanctioned Western electronics are funneled across borders and embedded in the precision systems guiding those strikes.

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