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

Russia and Ukraine dispute the status of the Kursk region, which Kyiv invaded last year in a surprise and successful incursion into Russian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed on Saturday what he called the complete failure of an offensive by Ukrainian forces into Russia's Kursk region after they were expelled from the last village Moscow said they had been holding.

Russia regained control of Kursk, the border region overtaken in a surprise incursion by Ukraine last year, President Vladimir Putin has claimed. “The Kyiv regime’s adventure has completely failed,” Putin said Saturday,