US investment bank Goldman Sachs said bond pricing inferred that markets believed there was 70 per cent probability of a Ukraine peace deal, up sharply from before the November election of US President Donald Trump.

“Our modeling suggests that current market pricing for a peace deal has risen from below 50 per cent prior to US elections to around 70 per cent at present,” Goldman Sachs said in research note to clients.

It added, however, that this was slightly lower than a peak of 76 per cent in February.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the three-year conflict in Ukraine – which his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

President Vladimir Putin said last month that Russia supported a US proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that fighting could not be paused until a number of crucial conditions were worked out or clarified.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Putin’s conditions for a ceasefire are unrealistic and has accused the Russian leader of wanting to continue the war.

Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014, and most but not all of four other regions which Moscow now claims are part of Russia – a claim not recognised by most countries.