Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a post on X Friday: "IVE SEEN ENOUGH KILLING OF INNOCENT UKRAINIAN women + children. President Trump pls put the toughest of sanctions on Putin. U ought to c from clear evidence that he is playing America as a patsy."

US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held crunch war talks in the heart of the Vatican minutes before the start of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, as the White House mounts an increasingly urgent push to strike a peace deal in Ukraine.

The US president says he fears the Russian leader is "tapping me along" given Moscow's strikes on Kyiv earlier this week.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared a three-day ceasefire in May in the war with Ukraine to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies in World War Two.

It’s the second time in less than two weeks that the Russian president has called a halt to fighting without committing to a long-term end to the war.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces denied Russian President Vladimir Putin's claim over the weekend that Russian forces had fully retaken the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an offensive last year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked North Korean troops for fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, after North Korea on Monday confirmed the deployment for the first time. In a statement Monday from the Kremlin,