According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Moscow is leveraging non-Ukraine issues to pressure Washington on its war demands, while playing the willing negotiator to secure all of Donetsk Oblast at the table. ISW warns that surrendering the rest of the region would be a strategic blunder, giving Moscow a better launchpad for future offensives it currently lacks the military strength to achieve.
Kremlin leverages unrelated issues to pressure Trump
Moscow is raising issues beyond its war in Ukraine to pressure the Trump administration into accepting its war-related demands, ISW says in its 1 February report. Ahead of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi — rescheduled from 1 February to 4-5 February, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sat down with a Kremlin journalist on 1 February to court the Trump administration.
ISW observed that this approach — casting Russia as a superpower on par with America and successor to Soviet global standing — ever since Trump took office in early 2025. Lavrov's statements "aim to use the prospects of economic deals or strategic arms talks to entice Trump into conceding to Russia’s demands about Ukraine," including excluding Europe from any peace process, ISW says.
Gromyko’s ghost at Abu Dhabi: The Soviet playbook Russia still uses to sabotage peace talks
Moscow seeks territorial gains at negotiating table, blocks demilitarized zone, spins demands as moderation
Russia is working to take all of Donetsk Oblast through diplomacy while projecting flexibility, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. Bloomberg sources said that Russian President Vladimir Putin views Ukrainian surrender of its Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts—and freezing the frontline in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—as a Russian “concession,” despite Moscow's 2022 illegal annexation of all four oblasts, the full territory of which Russian forces have still not seized.
The original US 28-point plan proposed Ukraine cede Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and freeze the southern frontline. Kyiv and Washington later floated a demilitarized or “free economic zone” in Donetsk Oblast, which Moscow rejected in December 2025.
The ISW warns Russia may pretend to accept a southern freeze just to derail talks on a demilitarized or economic zone in unoccupied Donetsk Oblast, while presenting its demand for total control there as a reasonable compromise.
"Ceding the rest of Donetsk Oblast to Russia would be a strategic mistake, as Russia is unlikely to seize this territory quickly or easily but would then be in a more advantageous position to renew attacks against Ukraine in the future," ISW continues to assess.
