Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy meeting at Pope Francis’s funeral was “indicative” of the “effort” being put in to secure a peace deal for Ukraine, UK foreign secretary David Lammy has said.
The US and Ukrainian presidents were pictured in discussion at the Vatican over the weekend, having both travelled to Rome for the service, PA reported.
The foreign secretary told the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee on Wednesday that Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron have done “a lot of the heavy lifting” in terms of trying to bring nations together to support any potential future agreement.
It comes as Ukrainian official indicated they are willing to sign a minerals resources agreement with the US, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, with the country’s economy minister in Washington looking to iron out the final technical details.
The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on Saturday was the first since their fraught White House encounter earlier this year. In the hours after, the American president appeared to criticise Vladimir Putin, writing on TruthSocial that the Russian leader could be “just tapping me along”.
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