Ukraine and Russia plan on Friday in Istanbul to hold their first direct peace talks in more than three years.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky had travelled to Turkey but said he would not attend the talks, after his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin declined his calls for face-to-face negotiations.
Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022 and Moscow's army controls around a fifth of Ukraine's territory.
Here's what is known about the talks in Istanbul:
When are the talks?
A three-way meeting between Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish delegations is set for 0930 GMT, a source in the Turkish foreign ministry said Friday.
Ahead of that, there will be separate talks between Ukraine, the United States and Turkey that will get underway at 0745 GMT.
Putin last weekend proposed the talks for Thursday, but then the Kremlin spent several days refusing to say who would go or provide any details.
The Russian team arrived in Istanbul on Thursday morning, while Zelensky sent the Ukrainian delegation from Ankara in the evening after he held talks there with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Who is expected to attend?
The Russian side is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline aide to Putin and ex-culture minister who was involved in the 2022 negotiations.
The Kremlin named three other negotiators -- Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin and Igor Kostyukov, director of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency.
Zelensky on Thursday criticised the level of Russia's representatives and said it was a sign Moscow was not "serious" about negotiating an end to the war.
Top diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov -- involved in previous talks with the United States -- are not in Istanbul.
Because Putin is not joining, Zelensky said he also will not attend the talks.
The Ukraine delegation will be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who has Crimean roots and was involved in several rounds of diplomacy involving Moscow, including the 2022 talks, prisoner exchanges and the 2022 Black Sea grain deal.
He will be joined by around a dozen deputy ministers and military officials, including Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, Deputy Security Service Head Oleksandr Poklad and Deputy Chief of General Staff Oleksiy Shevchenko.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also landed in Istanbul on Friday.
He said Thursday he would meet Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga.
A lower-level US official -- Director for Policy Planning Michael Anton -- will hold working level talks with the Russia delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
Where do the two parties stand?
Zelensky said his team had a mandate to discuss an unconditional ceasefire that Kyiv, its allies, and the United States have been pushing for.
Russia has repeatedly rejected the proposal, insisting a whole range of questions had to be settled before a ceasefire could be agreed.
Beyond that, the fundamental differences between Kyiv and Moscow are far from being resolved.
Russia insists the talks address what it calls the "root causes" of the conflict, including the "denazification" and demilitarisation of Ukraine, two vague terms Moscow has used to justify the invasion.
It has also repeated that Ukraine must cede its territory occupied by Russian troops.
Kyiv said it will not recognise its territories as Russian -- though Zelensky has acknowledged that Ukraine might only get them back through diplomatic means.
What are the expectations?
US President Donald Trump appeared to concede that progress in Turkey was unlikely, saying there would be no movement towards ending the war until he met Putin.
Rubio also said he has no "high expectations" for the talks.
Moscow's top negotiator insisted he was ready to discuss "possible compromises" at the talks.
"Unfortunately, they are not taking the real negotiations very seriously," Zelensky told reporters after a meeting with Erdogan.
Why Turkey?
NATO member Turkey has sought to maintain good relations with both Ukraine and Russia since Moscow's invasion began and has twice hosted talks on the war.
Representatives from Moscow and Kyiv discussed an outline to end the war in Istanbul in March 2022.
But those talks broke down following Russia's retreat from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were found dead following a month-long occupation by Russian forces.
Moscow sees these talks as a "continuation" of those failed negotiations, Medinsky said Thursday.
Contact between the warring sides has been limited since and mainly dedicated to humanitarian issues such as prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of soldiers' remains.
With AFP
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