US President Donald Trump said Russia should make peace with Ukraine ​after a "very good" meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday, in comments that sparked cautious optimism among G7 leaders that a peace deal could be struck.

The upbeat mood ‌over the Ukraine conflict, now deep into its fifth year, stands in stark contrast to Zelenskyy's meeting with Trump in the Oval Office last year, when he was told he had no leverage in potential peace talks with Russia.

Zelenskyy and his European allies came to this week's G7 summit in the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains hoping to impress upon Trump that Ukraine's battlefield fortunes had improved thanks to its drone incursions deep into Russia.

Trump, who arrived at the summit ​brandishing a preliminary deal to end his war with Iran, said he would do what he could do to end the conflict in Ukraine, but there were few details of any concrete steps to ​raise the pressure on Moscow.

"Look, Russia should make a deal," Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on ⁠both sides. "I'm gonna do whatever I can."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Trump's statement that Russia should end the war was cause for cheer.

"I found him to be very cooperative, and I also saw him ​listening very attentively," Merz told reporters. "And in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to ​end the war."

But two European diplomats said Trump had been noncommittal on imposing further US sanctions on Moscow, as European leaders want.

Trump told reporters that Washington was now in a position to let Russian oil waivers lapse after an interim accord to end the Iran war soothed markets, but he did not address the question of broader punitive measures.

Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne later showed a clip of Zelenskyy saying he hoped to meet Trump again on Tuesday.

"Our teams will be meeting over the course of the next 24 hours at various levels ​and will continue to meet," Zelenskyy said. "I think that tomorrow we will also meet separately with the president (Trump)."

Zelenskyy said on Monday that he had offered to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin at the G7 summit, ​but a Kremlin aide said that did not come up in a call between Trump and Putin.

(With input from Reuters)