(Updates for afternoon European trading)

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Euro zone bond yields fell

slightly on Thursday, after rising relatively sharply for two

days, as investors digested comments by U.S. President Donald

Trump promising a swift end to the Ukraine war.

Trump separately discussed the war on Wednesday with Russian

President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr

Zelenskiy, and told U.S. officials to begin talks on ending the

nearly three-year-long conflict.

Oil and European natural gas prices fell

on Wednesday and Thursday, cooling concerns about inflation and

helping pull yields lower.

Germany's 10-year bond yield, the benchmark for

the euro zone, was last down 3 basis points (bps) at 2.455%. It

rose 12 bps over the previous two sessions to its highest in

almost two weeks, partly driven by strong U.S. inflation data on

Wednesday. Yields move inversely to prices.

Weak industrial data was also adding to the downward

pressure on yields, with figures on Thursday showing production

shrank more than expected in December.

Hauke Siemssen, rates strategist at Commerzbank, said bond

prices were stabilising after coming under pressure in part due

to large amounts of issuance in the last few days, including

syndications from the European Union, France and Italy.

He said the potential for German bonds to rally on the

back of Ukraine peace talks is limited, given that the

improvement in investor sentiment would tend to favour stocks.

"Bunds look set to enter calmer waters with the

duration-intensive euro (bond) supply out of the way for the

rest of the week and the data calendar also thinning out," he

said. "Duration" denotes longer-dated bonds.

The two-year German bond yield, which is more

sensitive to European Central Bank interest rate expectations,

was 1 bp lower at 2.126% after rising 11 bps over the last two

sessions.

Traders on Thursday very slightly added to their bets on

further ECB cuts this year and now see around 77 bps of

reductions by the end of 2025.

Italy's 10-year yield was down 5 bps at 3.513%,

and the gap between Italian and German bond yields

narrowed 2 bps to 106 bps.