Trump tells Putin to 'stop shooting' and make a deal

US President Donald Trump said Sunday he wanted Russia's Vladimir Putin to "stop shooting" in Ukraine and sign a peace deal, one day after the US leader met Ukraine's president at the Vatican.

Trump, who boasted before his inauguration that he could halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine within one day, has launched a diplomatic offensive since taking office to halt the fighting.

Those efforts have so far failed to yield any results.

"Well, I want him to stop shooting, sit down, and sign a deal," Trump said in response to a question on what he wanted from Putin.

Trump was speaking on the tarmac at Morristown airport before boarding Air Force One bound for Washington, having attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome on Saturday.

"We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it," Trump added, likely referring to a US-proposed peace plan for the more-than-three-year-long conflict in Ukraine.

Trump had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the funeral, where the two leaders spoke face-to-face for the first time since a disastrous televised meeting in the White House in February.

After their brief talk in St Peter's Basilica, Trump cast doubt over whether Putin wanted an end to the war, which has devastated swaths of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people.

Trump also said on Sunday that he thought Zelensky was ready to give up Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula captured by Russia in 2014, as part of efforts to agree a peace deal.

"Oh, I think so," said Trump in response to a question on whether he thought Zelensky was ready to "give up" the territory.

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, claimed to have annexed four eastern and southern territories of the war-battered country despite not having full military control over them.

US says it could be 'very critical week' for Ukraine deal

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the coming week could be "very critical" for efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as Trump puts pressure on Moscow and Kyiv to make a deal.

"We're close, but we're not close enough," Rubio told NBC's "Meet the Press" news program, adding: "I think this is going to be a very critical week."

"We have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in, or if it's time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally, if not more, important in some cases," he added.

Rubio said there were still "reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic as well" about the chances for an agreement to end the conflict triggered by Russia's invasion in February 2022.

The US secretary of state reiterated there would be "no military solution" to the war.

"The only solution to this war is a negotiated settlement where both sides are going to have to give up something they claim to want and are going to have to give the other side something they wish they didn't," he said.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, speaking on Fox News's "Sunday Morning Futures," said Sunday that there had been a "number of discussions of territory" with Moscow and Kyiv, without offering more detail.