As the meeting between Witkoff and Putin was taking place, Trump claimed talks were going in the right direction. "They're meeting with Putin right now, as we speak, and we have a lot of things going on, and I think in the end we're going to end up with a lot of good deals, including tariff deals and trade deals," he told reporters in the US. He said his aim was to bring about an end to fighting in Ukraine which he said was claiming the lives of 5,000 Ukrainian and Russians a week, adding he believed "we're pretty close" to a peace deal.

Trump also said Zelensky had not signed the "final papers on the very important Rare Earths Deal with the United States". "It is at least three weeks late," he said, adding that he hoped it would be signed "immediately". The long-talked of minerals deal, which would give the US a stake in Ukraine's abundant natural resource deposits, was meant to be signed in February but was derailed after an acrimonious meeting between Trump and Zelensky in Washington.

Russia and Ukraine's positions in securing a peace deal still seem miles apart, with no representative from Ukraine invited to take part in the talks in Moscow. Writing on social media on Friday, Zelensky criticised Russia for failing to agree to a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the US on 11 March and urged allies to apply more pressure to it. "It's been 45 days since Ukraine agreed to President Trump's proposal for quiet in the sky, sea and the frontline," he said.

"Russia rejects all this. Without pressure this cannot be resolved. Pressure on Russia is necessary."

He said Russia was being allowed to import missiles from countries such as North Korea, which he said it then used in a deadly missile strike on Kyiv on Thursday, which killed 12 people and injured dozens. "Insufficient pressure on North Korea and its allies allows them to make such ballistic missiles. The missile that killed the Kyiv residents contained at least 116 parts imported from other countries, and most of them, unfortunately, were made by US companies," Zelensky alleged.

Following the attack on Kyiv, Trump said he was "putting a lot of pressure" on both sides to end the war, and directly addressed Putin in a post on social media, saying: "Vladimir STOP!" Since then, however, Trump has blamed Kyiv for starting the war, telling Time magazine: "I think what caused the war to start was when they [Ukraine] started talking about joining Nato."