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Daria Novikov is a Russia Researcher on the Russia and Ukraine portfolio at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Prior to joining the ISW, she worked with a Track II diplomatic initiative, where her research concerned European security regimes, the Russian domestic industrial base (DIB), and arms control agreements. Daria’s professional interests include information and influence operations, sanction-evading military cooperation among U.S. adversaries, and hybrid warfare.
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff referred on February 23 to the draft Istanbul Protocol crafted in 2022 as a "guidepost" for future negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Russia's demands in the draft agreement were made in the first and second months of the war when Russian troops were advancing on Kyiv City and throughout northeastern, eastern, and southern Ukraine and before Ukrainian forces conducted successful counteroffensives that liberated significant swaths of territory in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts. The draft agreement does not reflect the situation today in which Ukraine has liberated 50 percent of the territory Russian forces have seized since 2022 and largely forced a year-long Russian offensive to a standstill. The Istanbul draft agreement surrenders Ukraine's sovereignty and prohibits any efforts by Ukraine or any other state to maintain Ukrainian armed forces adequate to deter or defend against, a future Russian attack. It also explicitly ruled out many actions Trump Administration officials have identified as parts of a peace agreement acceptable to the US.
Russia dedicated staggering amounts of manpower and equipment to several major offensive efforts in Ukraine in 2024, intending to degrade Ukrainian defenses and seize the remainder of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The United States can use the enormous challenges Russia will face in 2025 as leverage to secure critical concessions in ongoing negotiations to end the war by continuing and even expanding military support to Ukraine.
In late 2022 and early 2023, Putin sought to suppress independent veteran groups, fearing they could threaten his regime after returning from Ukraine.
Russia has achieved relatively faster gains in 2024 than throughout most of the war after the initial invasion and developed a blueprint for conducting slow, tactical envelopments to achieve these advances, but Russian forces have failed to restore the operational maneuver necessary to achieve operationally significant gains rapidly.
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff referred to the early 2022 Istanbul protocols as offering "guideposts" for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on February 23. An agreement based on those protocols would be a capitulation document.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a coordinated campaign in late 2022 and early 2023 to prevent the emergence of an independent veterans-based civil society in Russia, likely out of fear that veteran groups could threaten the stability of his regime upon their return from Ukraine.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov claimed on February 22 that US and Russian officials are planning to meet within the next two weeks in an unspecified third country about bilateral relations. Ryabkov claimed that the United States and Russia are undertaking two "parallel" but "politically interconnected" negotiation tracks that will discuss the war in Ukraine and US-Russian bilateral relations.