Trump had offered to travel to Turkey for the talks while in the Gulf last week if Putin would also attend, but Putin sent a team of negotiators instead.
The president has been pressuring Putin and Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire in the more than three-year-old war.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at Friday’s meeting. The talks lasted only one hour and 40 minutes and yielded an agreement to trade 1,000 prisoners of war on each side. The two countries have not specified when that would happen.
Zelenskyy called on Saturday for stronger sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. “This was a deliberate killing of civilians,” he said.
“Pressure must be exerted on Russia to stop the killings. Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy.”
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said it struck a military target in Sumy. Its defence ministry said Russian troops had captured another settlement in eastern Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and said he welcomed the “positive role” of the United States in helping to secure a resumption of talks between Russia and Ukraine.
A Russian foreign ministry statement quoted Lavrov as saying contacts would continue.
Rubio was quoted as telling the CBS news program Face the Nation that Lavrov said the Russians were “working on a series of ideas and requirements that they would have in order to move forward with a ceasefire and further negotiations”.
“I think your question is, ‘Are they tapping us along?'” he said in the interview to be broadcast on Sunday. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Rubio, who told reporters earlier in Rome that the Vatican could be a venue to facilitate further Russia-Ukraine dialogue, told CBS it was a “very generous offer that may be taken up on.”
