US President Joe Biden is due to meet European leaders in Berlin on Friday, with the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine high on the agenda.
Biden arrived for his first visit to the German capital during his presidency late on Thursday.
He is to be received by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier early on Friday and presented with the highest class of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit reserved for heads of state, Germany's highest honour.
The 81-year-old is then due to hold bilateral talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz before a joint meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The talks are likely to focus heavily on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, which have both seen highly significant developments in recent days.
Biden arrived in Berlin just hours after Israel's bombshell announcement that it has killed Hamas leader Yehya al-Sinwar, offering an opportunity to end the year-long conflict in Gaza and free remaining Israeli hostages.
The leaders are also expected to discuss Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's long-awaited "victory plan," which Zelensky made public this week amid further Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
The proposal includes a demand for Ukraine to immediately be invited to join NATO, as well as requests for permission to use Western long-range weapons against targets deep within Russia, with the aim of forcing Moscow to negotiate an end to the war.
The United States and Germany have been Kiev's most important providers of military and financial aid, but Scholz and Biden have resisted Zelensky's latest demands, fearing being drawn into direct confrontation with Russia.
Re-arranged visit to last 19 hours
Biden's trip comes over a week after he cancelled his original plans to travel to Germany due to Hurricane Milton.
He had been due to carry out the first official state visit to Berlin by a US president since Ronald Reagan, as well as attending a key international summit on aid for Ukraine at the US air base in Ramstein in western Germany.
Instead, the hastily re-arranged visit is now expected to last just 19 hours before Biden returns to Washington.
Biden's trip comes just three months before the end of his term in office, and just weeks before Vice President Kamala Harris faces former president Donald Trump in November's election, with significant implications for the future of trans-Atlantic ties.
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