US President Donald Trump met Ukrainian premier Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today, having announced further talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin as negotiations are stepped up around the war in Ukraine.

Mr Trump has said he will be redoubling efforts to end the conflict, claiming “great progress was made” in a conversation with Mr Putin on Thursday and announcing there would be a follow-up meeting. A date has not been set, but it would take place in Budapest, Hungary, he added, suggesting that it could happen in about two weeks.

Yuri Ushakov, President Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the Russian leader had initiated the call, which he described as “very frank and trusting,” but the news surprised Kyiv, which had not been notified beforehand.  

He said President Putin had made it clear to the US president that selling long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, something Mr Trump has publicly discussed, would ”inflict significant damage to the relations between our countries.”

US talks with President Zelensky, who has been seeking weapons that would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory, were starting at time of press.

The Ukrainian president has argued such strikes would help compel President Putin to take Mr Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.

President Trump has previously said the US owns ”a lot of Tomahawks,” but on Thursday he said stockpiles were limited and there may not be missiles to spare.

”We have a lot of them, but we need them” he said.

The delivery of Tomahawks could take years as would the training necessary for Ukraine to use the weapon.

Once functional, the Tomahawk, with a range of about 995 miles, would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory. Russia is likely to see this as an existential threat to its security and could spark a nuclear response from Moscow.

Trump’s renewed focus on the war in Ukraine follows this month’s US-imposed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which he celebrated with a whirlwind trip to Israel and Egypt on Monday.

Ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza was central to Mr Trump’s presidential campaign pitch last year, when he persistently pilloried then-president Joe Biden for his handling of the conflicts.

Mr Trump has so-far been unable to end the fighting in Ukraine, however, or even persuade the Russian leader to hold direct talks with President Zelensky. The two leaders had previously met in Alaska in August, which did not produce a diplomatic breakthrough.