US President Donald Trump is seeking to hold a trilateral summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, which could lead to a new division of the world into spheres of influence.
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This came in an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, comparing the potential tripartite meeting to the conference held in Yalta, Crimea, in February 1945 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to determine the fate of Europe and the post-World War II order.
The Wall Street Journal wrote: Trump has long sought major deals with Russia and China, and that may be his motivation now as he intensifies his hostility toward Ukraine and Europe and seeks a “Yalta 2” summit with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
According to the newspaper, "The Yalta analogy is not entirely accurate, as Stalin and Churchill were allies of the United States in 1945, while Russia and China are now adversaries, but the trio did indeed try to divide the world, and that is the danger in what Trump says he is now open to."
The newspaper believes that the recent easing of US sanctions against Russian diesel fuel may indicate Washington's desire to reach "more ambitious" agreements with Moscow.
According to the Wall Street Journal, such agreements could "lead to a split in NATO, weaken America's position in the Pacific, and increase Chinese pressure on Taiwan."
On Monday, Trump expressed his willingness to meet with Putin and Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit scheduled for November 18 and 19 in Shenzhen, China, adding that he intends to focus on the issue of nuclear disarmament, but did not rule out discussing the Ukrainian crisis as well.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously confirmed his country's support for holding a trilateral meeting with the United States and China, stressing the need to first determine its agenda .
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The Nevada explosion: an American simulation of a secret nuclear test scenario
The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it conducted an underground explosion at the Nevada desert test site using a conventional charge, as part of simulating secret nuclear tests and developing methods for detecting them.
Matthew Napoli, deputy director of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment (a non-governmental organization listed as undesirable in Russia) that his country carried out an underground explosion at the Nevada test site using a conventional charge to simulate covert nuclear tests and develop methods for detecting them.
Napoli explained: "We recently conducted a test at the National Nuclear Security Facility in Nevada, where we carried out an underground detonation of a conventional explosive to simulate a nuclear explosion in a way that is called 'separation'."
He added that if the charge is placed deep underground in direct contact with the rock, it transmits a specific key signal that we can detect with high precision. Napoli pointed out that the perpetrators might excavate a cavity inside a mountain to isolate the charge from direct contact with the rock, with the aim of carrying out a covert explosion.
According to him, experts from the US Department of Energy simulated this scenario at a depth of 300 meters by detonating a large charge inside an artificial chamber, which allowed for the collection of valuable data to identify secret nuclear tests.
The official confirmed that the detonation of the non-nuclear charge provided American experts with a massive amount of seismic and geophysical data, and that the information obtained will allow for the quality detection and classification of any potential attempts to carry out covert underground nuclear explosions around the world.