Face-to-face talks on Friday will give the Russian president a chance to pitch his conditions for peace, chief among them for Ukraine to hand over swaths of its territory.

Ukraine lost around 14,000 soldiers and civilians during this period. But in February 2022, Putin launched his full-scale invasion. Russian troops quickly reached the outskirts of Kyiv and seized huge swathes of the south, including big chunks of two more oblasts, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.