Senior diplomats from the US and Russia are meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva for the first of a series of crunch talks aimed at defusing tension over Ukraine.
The stakes for these talks on Monday are high. But both sides hold wildly different expectations. The US and other Western powers want to dissuade Russia from invading Ukraine.
But Russia wants to talk about its maximalist demands for Nato to retreat from eastern Europe. It's calling for Nato to pull its forces out of former Soviet countries, end any eastern expansion and rule out Ukraine joining the alliance.
Some US officials fear these demands are deliberately unrealistic, designed to be rejected and used as a pretext for military action. Other diplomats believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is aiming high to squeeze concessions out of a Western alliance that is willing to give ground to avoid war.
They say the Russian president is effectively demanding an end to Europe's post-Cold War security architecture and the establishment of a Russian "sphere of influence".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59935990