Zelensky and Trump meet inside St Peter’s Basilica before Pope’s funeral

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump have met inside St Peter’s Basilica ahead of Pope Francis’ funeral.

The White House described the 15-minute meeting as “very productive” and Zelensky said later they had managed to discuss a lot.

Trump and Zelensky were pictured sitting locked in deep discussion, minutes before Pope Francis’ funeral was due to start.

The meeting came a day after Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal”, following talks between his envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday.

Posting an image of Zelensky sitting with Trump, the Ukrainian leader’s head of office Andriy Yermak added a single word, “constructive”.

The two leaders had not met since their tempestuous Oval Office meeting in the White House at the end of February, when Trump told Zelensky he was not winning and “you don’t have the cards”.

He repeated that message this week, saying the Ukrainian leader had “no cards to play”.

Two images of the men showed Trump in a blue suit, Zelensky wearing a black top and trousers – with the two men sitting opposite each other having an intense conversation and holding serious expressions.

Another image posted by the Ukrainian delegation from inside St Peter’s showed the two men standing alongside Sir Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron, his hand on Zelensky’s shoulder.

The implication was that the prime minister and French president had helped to bring the two together, against the sombre backdrop of the Pope’s funeral.

Steven Cheung, White House communications director, said more details about the Vatican City private meeting between Trump and Zelensky would follow.

After the meeting the two men then walked down the steps of the basilica and took their seats in the same row.

During the service Zelensky and Trump sat a short distance from each other in the front row, with Macron and other heads of state in between.

In his homily, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re spoke of Pope Francis’s incessant calls for peace. “‘Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” said the cardinal.

Ukrainian officials had talked of a possible second meeting but Trump’s motorcade drove away from St Peter’s immediately afterwards and his plane left Rome a short time later.

Zelensky posted on social media that they had had a “good meeting. We discussed a lot one on one”, adding that he hoped for results on everything they had said.

He said it was a “very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.

Trump’s envoy Witkoff left Moscow on Friday after a fourth visit to Russia since the start of the year, after three-hour talks later described as “very useful” by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.

Ushakov also added that it had brought the “Russian and US positions closer together, not just on Ukraine but also on a range of other international issues” of which the “possibility of resuming direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives was in particular discussed”.

Saturday’s meetings are the first time the two leaders have met face-to-face since February after an unprecedented confrontation occurred in the Oval Office.

During the heated exchange Trump accused the Ukrainian president of “gambling with World War Three” by not going along with ceasefire plans led by Washington.

Kyiv has been on the receiving end of growing pressure from Trump to accept territorial concessions as part of an agreement with Moscow to end the war.

These concessions would reportedly include giving up large portions of land, including the Crimean peninsula which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelensky has repeatedly rejected the idea in the past. He suggested to the BBC on Friday that “a full and unconditional ceasefire opens up the possibility to discuss everything”.