"The president has made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first to stop the killing," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.

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.

President Trump fired off rare public criticism of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and sat for a dramatic one-on-one talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Vatican over the weekend,