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.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky met briefly in the hush of St Peter's basilica before Pope Francis's funeral on Saturday in their first encounter since a noisy White House clash and the US president later cast doubt on whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants a peace deal.

Donald Trump pondered whether Vladimir Putin is ‘tapping me along’ with talks of a peace he doesn’t really want after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican. A photo released during the funeral of Pope Francis today showed the US and Ukraine presidents chatting on the sidelines after paying their respects inside St Peter’s Basilica.