US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held crunch war talks in the heart of the Vatican minutes before the start of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, as the White House mounts an increasingly urgent push to strike a peace deal in Ukraine.

The US president says he fears the Russian leader is "tapping me along" given Moscow's strikes on Kyiv earlier this week.

The office of Zelensky shared a picture of Trump and Zelensky engaged in conversation at St. Peter’s Basilica.