As US negotiators meet separately with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Saudi Arabia to discuss a partial ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war, AFP looks at who is in each team.
Andrew Peek
On the US side is Andrew Peek, a veteran of Donald Trump's first administration and a former US Army intelligence officer who now serves as a senior director on his National Security Council (NSC).
From 2017 to 2019, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran, and later oversaw Russian affairs at the NSC before being placed on administrative leave in January 2020.
Several US media outlets reported at the time that he was subject of an internal investigation, though it did not result in any legal action.
Writing for the Atlantic Council in 2022, Peek called Vladimir Putin's government a "masterful practitioner of grey-zone full-spectrum warfare" that sought to "humiliate" the United States.
Michael Anton
A prominent conservative essayist and Trump backer, Michael Anton now heads policy planning at the US State Department, a position that puts him in charge of long-term strategy.
He has written dismissively of former president Joe Biden's staunch support for Ukraine.
He wrote in an essay that the past administration, with its "virulent Russophobia", was ignoring real risks of nuclear confrontation by pushing Moscow into a corner, and voiced annoyance that any critic of his policy was denounced as a "Putin apologist."
Anton is also a trained chef who volunteered in the White House kitchen to prepare a state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron.
Sergey Beseda
Sergey Beseda, 70, is an advisor to the head of Russia's powerful FSB security service but is not seen as a high-ranking decision maker.
From 2009 to 2024 he headed the "5th Service" of the FSB, a department reportedly involved in foreign intelligence activities, particularly within the countries of the former Soviet Union.
He was in Ukraine during the country's Maidan Revolution in 2014, when protesters overthrew a pro-Russian authoritarian government. Some Western authors suggested he was there to convince Ukraine's leadership to suppress the protest movement by force.
The 5th Service is reported to have been responsible for providing President Vladimir Putin with intelligence information ahead of the invasion of Ukraine, widely regarded to have been botched in its initial months.
Grigory Karasin
Grigory Karasin is a 75-year-old Russian senator who has worked in various diplomatic roles since 1972, including deputy foreign minister and ambassador to the UK.
Since 2021, he has chaired the Russian senate's foreign affairs committee, where he has presided over the legislature's response to the Ukraine war.
He has been a staunch critic of Western sanctions, calling them a form of "economic and political strangulation", and has been sanctioned himself by the US and EU.
He has repeatedly voiced support for Russia's invasion, writing in April 2022: "The country believes in its soldiers and the just cause they are defending."
Rustem Umerov
Umerov is a 42-year-old former businessman who became Ukraine's defence minister in 2023 after his predecessor was dismissed amid a string of corruption scandals.
Close to the influential head of Ukraine's presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, Umerov has already spearheaded some of Kyiv's most important negotiations and prisoner exchanges.
In the weeks following the invasion, he was part of a Ukrainian delegation that negotiated directly with Moscow.
He then took part in several rounds of talks to set up the Black Sea grain corridor that allowed Ukrainian maritime exports, an accord brokered by Turkey and the United Nations.
He has many diplomatic connections in the Muslim world, and is a prominent member of the Tatar Muslim community from Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Pavlo Palisa
Pavlo Palisa, a highly respected Ukrainian commander trained at a US military academy, was appointed deputy head of Zelensky's cabinet in November 2024, largely to help the presidency get first-hand, real-time information from the front.
Going by the military call sign Hunter, the 40-year-old has received several state honours for his military service.
A graduate of the Lviv Institute of Ground Forces in 2007, he completed further studies at other military universities in Ukraine and at a US army college in Kansas.
He cut short his studies in the US and returned to Ukraine when Russia's invasion began in 2022.
His younger brother is deputy commander of a military brigade.