as Donald Trump renewed his call for the two leaders to meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. The push for a bilateral meeting comes after the US president met Putin in Alaska last week, and welcomed seven European leaders and Zelensky to the White House on Monday.

Trump admitted the conflict was "a tough one" to solve and conceded it was possible the Russian president was not interested in ending hostilities. "We're going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks," he said on Tuesday. "It's possible that he doesn't want to make a deal."

Putin faced a "rough situation" if that were the case, Trump added, without offering any details. Despite initially pushing for a three-way summit with Putin and Zelensky, Trump is now suggesting "it would be better" if the two leaders initially met without him.

He added that he would attend a meeting with them "if necessary", but wanted to "see what happens". The Russian president told Trump on Monday that he was "open" to the idea of direct talks with Ukraine, but the next day Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov watered down that already vague commitment. Any meeting would have to be prepared "gradually... starting with the expert level and thereafter going through all the required steps", he said, repeating a frequent noncommittal Kremlin line. Dmitry Polyanskiy, a Russian deputy representative to the UN, told the BBC "nobody [had] rejected" the opportunity for direct talks, "but it shouldn't be a meeting for the sake of a meeting". (BBC)