WASHINGTON: The Trump administration shelved in recent weeks an inter-agency working group it had set up to formulate strategies for pressuring Russia into speeding up peace talks with Ukraine, according to three US officials.

The effort, which was established earlier in the spring, lost steam in May as it became increasingly clear to participants that United States President Donald Trump was not interested in adopting a more confrontational stance toward Moscow, said the officials.

Despite pledging during his campaign to end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his presidency, Trump in recent months has grown increasingly frustrated that his push has yielded no breakthroughs. He has begun saying that the US may abandon its efforts to broker peace altogether.

In light of that threat, the working group's task seemed increasingly irrelevant, added those officials, who requested anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.

"It lost steam toward the end because the president wasn't there. Instead of doing more, maybe he wanted to do less," one of the officials said.

The death of the working group, the existence of which has not been previously reported, is likely to deepen European allies' concerns over Trump's at-times conciliatory tone toward Russia and his reluctance to express full-throated support for Ukraine ahead of a pivotal summit of NATO allies later this month.

On the first day of a meeting of Group of Seven leaders in Canada on Monday, the Republican president said removing Russia from the former Group of Eight over a decade ago had been a mistake.

The final blow for the working group came roughly three weeks ago, when most members of the White House National Security Council - including the entire team dealing directly with the Ukraine war - were dismissed as part of a broad purge, according to the three officials.

The effort was set up and coordinated by high-ranking NSC staffers, the officials said, though it included participants from the State Department, Treasury Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Among those working on the effort was Andrew Peek, the top NSC official for Europe and Russia, who was removed in May.

It is unclear precisely who gave the order to discontinue the effort, but the officials suggested the depth o...