Over the past weekend, President Trump and President Vladimir Zelensky met briefly before the funeral of the late Pope Francis at the Vatican in Rome. This was the first meeting between the two leaders since their intense and unproductive meeting at the White House in late February. They met in hopes of brokering a mineral deal involving a strategic resource that could potentially shift the balance of power in the region between the two nations and also bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine.

However, unlike the meeting between the two leaders in February, this most recent meeting was productive. The White House on Sunday stated that the “15-minute meeting with Zelensky was very productive.” The two leaders discussed hopes for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine to be brokered, as well as what appeared to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unwillingness for peace between the two nations. After his forces launched missile strikes and drone strikes at Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv over the weekend, hitting residential buildings and killing eight people. These strikes made U.S. President Donald Trump and his advisors believe that Putin and Russia honestly don’t want peace and that the Russian leader is using these strikes as military action to drag the conflict on further to have Ukraine come to the negating table on terms that are more suitable for Putin and his territorial aims in the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also met with other world leaders, such as the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. The Ukrainian President and his advisors had hoped to have further discussions with their American counterparts after the funeral, which unfortunately did not occur, as President Trump left promptly from the Vatican after the funeral.