Ukraine shoots down 55 Russian drones overnight as fighting rages on the front lines. What is known of potential Ukraine-Russia talks in Türkiye. ISW explains the “Istanbul protocols”: Putin maintains his war aim of Ukraine’s full capitulation.
Ukraine shoots down 55 Russian drones overnight as fighting rages on front lines
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Monday that it shot down 55 out of 108 drones launched by Russia overnight. Thirty decoy drones disappeared off radar after likely being disabled by electronic warfare systems, without causing damage.
The drones were launched from the area of Russia’s Bryansk, Oryol, Shatalovo, Millerovo and Primorsko-Akhtarsk, and from Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea. The intercepts took place over the country’s eastern, northern, southern and central regions, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
The Air Force and other branches of the Ukrainian military deployed aircraft, surface-to-air missile troops, electronic warfare units and mobile teams to repel the attack. The regions of Odesa, Mykolayiv, Donetsk and Zhytomyr were affected by the drone strikes.
Fighting continues to rage on the front lines. There were 155 combat engagements in the past day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a morning update on Monday. Russia launched 65 air strikes and dropped 125 glide bombs on Ukrainian troops’ positions and populated areas. It also made 3,500 attacks, including 114 with the use of multiple launch rocket systems, and deployed 3,443 kamikaze drones.
Russia launched air strikes at towns and villages in Kharkiv region (Horokhovatka and Sadovod), in Donetsk region (Kostyantynivka and Rodynske), in Zaporizhzhia region (Novodarivka, Malynivka, Zaliznychne, Pavlivka and Mali Shcherbaky) and in Kherson region (Kozatske).
In the past day, Ukrainian aircraft, missile troops and artillery units struck 20 areas where Russian troops and weapons amassed. They also hit five artillery systems, a military warehouse and a drone command post, the General Staff said.
In the Pokrovsk direction, Ukrainian troops repelled 70 assaults and offensive operations that Russia conducted on Sunday, the report reads.
What is known of potential Ukraine-Russia talks in Türkiye
Ukraine hosted a meeting of leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Saturday. The UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Kyiv in person, while others joined remotely. European leaders urged Russia to agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine starting on Monday.
In a late-night address on Sunday, Putin ignored the ceasefire offer and instead proposed holding “direct talks” with Ukraine in Türkiye on Thursday.
On Sunday, Trump issued a statement on his Truth Social website, saying Ukraine should agree to meet Russia immediately. “I’m starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Putin, who’s too busy celebrating the Victory of World War ll, which could not have been won (not even close!) without the United States of America,” Trump said.
Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, has reacted to Putin’s proposal for direct talks with Ukraine. Retweeting the New Zealand prime minister’s support for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, he wrote in a post on X: “Even the Prime Minister of New Zealand gets it. As President Trump has repeatedly said, stop the killing!! “An unconditional 30-day ceasefire first and, during it, move into comprehensive peace discussions. Not the other way around.”
In a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed Türkiye was ready to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, according to a readout from the Turkish presidency. “Türkiye is ready to provide all kinds of support, including hosting negotiations, to achieve a cease-fire and lasting peace,” the statement said.
Erdogan also told Putin in a phone call on Sunday that a comprehensive ceasefire would create the necessary environment for peace talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Sunday he was ready to meet Vladimir Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. “I will be waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally,” Zelenskyi wrote on X. “I hope that this time the Russians will not look for excuses.”
ISW explains “Istanbul protocols”: Putin maintains war aim of Ukraine’s full capitulation
Putin is attempting to manipulate ongoing discussions about a ceasefire and future peace in Ukraine, likely in an effort to undermine Ukrainian-US-European unity around a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said in an update on Sunday. The paragraphs below are quoted from the report.
Putin’s rhetorical posturing is an attempt to conceal limitations in the Russian military’s capabilities and distract from Russia’s failure to make any significant progress on the battlefield over the last two years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called for Russia and Ukraine to resume bilateral negotiations based on the early 2022 Istanbul protocols that include Russian demands amounting to full Ukrainian surrender. Any agreement based on those protocols would be a capitulation document.
Russian Presidential Aide Yuriy Ushakov stated that Russia will soon announce its delegation to the resumed negotiations in Istanbul and that such negotiations should account for “developments of the 2022 talks.” Putin and Ushakov are referring to Russia’s April 2022 Istanbul protocols draft agreement, which included terms that would have amounted to Ukraine’s surrender and left Ukraine helpless to defend against potential future Russian aggression.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Times (NYT) reported in March and June 2024 that both publications obtained several versions of the draft protocols from the April 2022 Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in Istanbul.
The draft protocols demanded that Ukraine forego its NATO membership aspirations and amend its constitution to add a neutrality provision that would ban Ukraine from joining any military alliances, concluding military agreements, or hosting foreign military personnel, trainers, or weapon systems in Ukraine. Russia also demanded that it, the United States, the United Kingdom (UK), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), France, and Belarus serve as security guarantors of the agreement. Russia demanded that the guarantor states “terminate international treaties and agreements incompatible with the permanent neutrality [of Ukraine],” including military aid agreements.
Russia demanded to limit the Ukrainian military to 85,000 soldiers, 342 tanks, and 519 artillery systems as part of the Istanbul protocols. Russia additionally demanded that Ukrainian missiles be limited to a range of 40 kilometers (25 miles), a range that would allow Russian forces to deploy critical systems and materiel close to Ukraine without fear of strikes.
Russia insisted on these terms in the first and second months of the war when Russian troops were advancing on Kyiv City and throughout northeastern, eastern, and southern Ukraine. Russia is now attempting to reiterate these same demands after three years of war, despite the fact that Ukrainian forces have since successfully forced Russia to withdraw from northern Ukraine, liberated significant swaths of territory in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts, and blunted the Russian rate of advance across the theater. Putin is rejecting the joint US-Ukrainian-European proposal for a general ceasefire and instead continues to demand Ukrainian surrender in an attempt to secure his strategic goals by drawing out negotiations while continuing to make battlefield gains.
Putin also continues to demand that any negotiations address Russia’s perceived “root causes” of the war in Ukraine. (…) The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that Russia must eliminate the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine, which Russian officials have defined as NATO’s alleged violation of commitments not to expand into Eastern Europe and along Russia’s borders in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, and the Ukrainian government’s alleged discrimination against ethnic Russians and Russian language, media, and culture in Ukraine. Kremlin officials recently claimed that any ceasefire agreement should limit Ukraine’s ability to mobilize and train new troops and receive Western military aid, while failing to offer similar concessions for Russia to limit its own force generation and defense production efforts. Calls for the elimination of these alleged “root causes” and limitations on Ukraine’s force generation capabilities are in line with Putin’s demands for Ukrainian neutrality, as well as Putin’s pre-war demand that would have required NATO to roll back to its pre-1997 borders.