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

President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky met on Saturday in Rome on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral and discussed the effort to end the war with Russia. Why it matters: This was the first meeting between Trump and Zelensky since their explosive Oval Office shouting match in late February,