Amidst a protracted and sanguinary conflict punctuated by escalatory offensives, including a brazen Ukrainian drone incursion targeting Russian strategic airfields, delegations from Russia and Ukraine convened in Turkey for a second round of ostensibly peace-oriented parleys, during which Russia tabled a comprehensive memorandum outlining preconditions for a cessation of hostilities – inter alia, the withdrawal of Ukrainian armed forces from the four annexed territories of 2022, the cessation of mobilisation and Western arms provisions, and the proscription of any third-party military presence on Ukrainian soil – alongside demands for the abrogation of martial law, the undertaking of elections, a declaration of neutrality, the renunciation of NATO accession aspirations, the circumscription of its armed forces, and the constitutional enshrinement of Russian as an official language, all of which have been categorically dismissed a priori by Kyiv and its Western interlocutors, although a tentative accord was reached regarding the repatriation of approximately 6,000 cadavers and the establishment of a commission to facilitate prisoner exchanges of gravely wounded combatants, these diplomatic overtures occurring in the immediate wake of Ukraine's meticulously orchestrated and unprecedentedly audacious drone campaign, a year-and-a-half-long endeavor that ostensibly resulted in the attrition of over 40 Russian warplanes stationed at geographically disparate air bases within the Russian Federation.