MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping next month to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, a meeting that would leave out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the Journal that discussions about a possible meeting were taking place. "There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda," he said.

If it happens, the summit would be the first attempt to settle the four-year-old war in a room from which Ukraine is absent. The Journal described the idea as an unprecedented move that would be expected to alarm many European countries, and said the terms Moscow has in mind would favour Russia.

According to the Journal, which cited people familiar with the discussions, Putin raised the idea during a telephone call with Trump on October 9. The same call produced an agreement for the United States to buy Russian diesel.

The Kremlin suggested holding the talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, scheduled for November 18-19 in Shenzhen, southern China, Reuters reported, citing the Journal.

A senior US official told the Journal that Trump had not agreed to a summit but could be receptive to the idea because of his desire to end the war. The White House, the Kremlin, and the Russian and Chinese embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Chinese officials are concerned the meeting could overshadow China's own role as APEC host, the Journal reported. Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, told the newspaper: "China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the US and Russia."

The report lands at a low point in relations between Washington and Kyiv. On Friday, Trump signed an executive order waiving sweeping new sanctions on Russia that Congress passed last month, days before they were due to take effect. The order said the waiver "is in the national interests of the United States," NBC News reported.

The law, named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, targets Russia's largest oil and gas buyers and allows the president to impose tariffs on their goods. It passed the Senate 86-11, according to Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who called the waiver "Beyond irresponsible."

Trump defended the decision on Truth Social on Sunday and turned on Zelensky. He wrote that he did not want to do anything that would "drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table," and accused Kyiv of striking Russian diesel refineries while knowing the attacks were "seriously hurting the world diesel markets."

"Zelenskyy doesn't care," Trump wrote, adding that "he doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did," according to Al Jazeera, which quoted the post.

The diesel deal Trump announced on October 9 calls for Russia to supply more than 300,000 metric tonnes of diesel to US and global markets. Fuel prices have climbed since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran in late February, and diesel prices have risen almost 70 percent since then, NBC News reported. Trump has blamed Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure for the higher costs.

Zelensky said on Saturday that lifting the sanctions was "wrong" and "only helps the Russians," calling it an "American sanctions blackout" and a "financial reward for Putin" in a post on Telegram. On NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday he said the waiver "will hurt Ukraine" and warned that formal US support for Russia would be a "historic error."

He struck a more conciliatory tone later on Sunday after speaking with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner about peace efforts and deliveries of Patriot air defence systems. Writing on X, he described "virtually non-stop communication" between the two teams and said Ukraine was "doing everything on our part to make this happen." He also said the United States had resumed sharing intelligence that helps Ukraine warn of incoming Russian missiles, after a brief pause.

The fighting has not slowed. A Russian air strike overnight into Monday killed a woman in Kyiv, hit a subway station on the city's left bank and damaged a 25-storey residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. Three other people were injured.

Ukraine, which last week abandoned a brief Trump-backed pause on strikes against Russian energy targets, launched a large drone attack on St Petersburg and the surrounding region over the weekend. Russian authorities said one person was killed and a refinery caught fire, and regional governor Alexander Drozdenko said 144 drones were intercepted. The Kremlin said attacks on Russian cities would not change its military objectives.

Zelensky accused Russia of violating the energy ceasefire 76 times and said tens of thousands of people had lost electricity.

Trump has not committed to attending a three-way session, and no agenda has been agreed. Any decision now rests on the four weeks before APEC opens in Shenzhen on November 18.