Zelensky and Trump meet in St. Peter’s Basilica in front of Papster funeral

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump met before Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica.

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

Trump and Zelensky were included in deep discussions in deep discussions, minutes before Pope Francis began.

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

The office chair of the Ukrainian leader, Andriy Yermak, added a single word “constructively”.

The two leaders had not met since their stormy Oval Office meeting in the White House at the end of February when Trump Zelensky said he didn’t win and “they don’t have the cards”.

He repeated this news this week and said that the Ukrainian leader “had no cards”.

Two pictures of the men showed Trump in a blue suit, Zelensky wore a black top and pants – the two men sitting opposite each other and having an intensive conversation and pausing serious expressions.

Another picture published by the Ukrainian delegation from St. Peter showed that the two men were standing on Zelensky’s shoulder alongside Sir Keir Starrer and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

The implication was that the Prime Minister and the French President had contributed to bringing them together against the dark background of the Pope’s funeral.

Steven Cheung, Communication Director of the White House, said that further details about the private meeting of the Vatican City between Trump and Zelensky would follow.

After the meeting, the two men went down the levels of the basilica and took their seats in the front row.

During the service, Zelensky and Trump were a short distance apart, with Macron and other heads of state being in between.

In his sermon, Cardinal Giovanni Battista re spoke about Pope Francis’s incessant demands. “‘Building bridges, not walls’ was a warning that he repeated many times,” said the cardinal.

The Ukrainian officials had spoken of a possible second meeting, but Trump’s car column immediately drove from St. Peter Weg and his plane left Rome shortly later.

Zelensky posted on social media that they had a “good meeting. We discussed a lot to others” and added that he hoped for everything they had said.

He said it was a “very symbolic meeting that has the potential to become historical when we achieve common results”.

Trump’s envoy Witkoff left Moscow on Friday after a fourth visit to Russia since the beginning of the year, after Putin Aide Yuri Ushakov was later described as “very useful” as “very useful”.

Ushakov added that it brought the “Russian and US positions into Ukraine, but also in a number of other international questions”, in particular the “possibility of resuming direct discussions between Russian and Ukrainian representatives”.

The meetings on Saturday are the first time that the two guides have been competing with an unprecedented confrontation in the Oval Office since February.

During the heated exchange Trump accused the Ukrainian President “Gambling with the Third World War” Due to Washington’s non -mouse schedule.

At the end of Trump’s growing pressure, Kyiv was to accept territorial concessions as part of an agreement with Moscow to terminate the war.

According to large parts of the country, these concessions would report, including the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelensky repeatedly rejected the idea in the past. He proposed the BBC on Friday that “a complete and unconditional ceasefire gives the opportunity to discuss everything”.