WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said after a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin that peace talks would begin “immediately” after his Russian counterpart refused to attend negotiations May 15 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin said Thursday, nearly a week after their first face-to-face session since shortly after Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and days after U.

Following years of outright conflict in Ukraine, President Donald Trump said that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants peace between the two countries.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on Friday over the Vatican as a potential location for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the Holy See itself would find it uncomfortable to host two mainly Orthodox Christian nations.

Trump believes ‘Putin is winning’ while G7 threatens Moscow with further sanctions - G7 threatens Moscow with more sanctions if it fails to reach ceasefire with Kyiv

Looking to improve business ties and promote checking Russian aggression, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States visited Ohio.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement on Tuesday that Pope Leo had confirmed during a phone call with her his willingness to host in the Vatican the next round of negotiations to try to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

As peace talks ramp up, experts and officials are already working on a looming post-war threat: the potential large-scale proliferation of guns in Ukraine once they are no longer needed on the battlefield.