Dmitry Peskov

Context: Mixed, and the two halves have now separated cleanly. The first half — 'no immediate prospect for resuming peace talks' — has borne out: no negotiating format has convened, the Rubio–Lavrov meeting of July 23 produced contradictory readouts rather than a process, and Zelenskyy on July 23 spoke of trilateral talks only in the autumn. The second half — that 'Russia remains open to it' — is contradicted by Peskov himself six days later: on July 22 he restated Putin's June 2024 maximalist demands as the basis of Russia's conditions, and Bloomberg reported the same day, citing three people close to the Kremlin, that Russia will return to talks only after seizing all of Donetsk Oblast by force, a timeline ISW assesses Russian forces are 'extremely unlikely' to meet. Openness conditioned on the other side's capitulation, or on a military outcome the assessing institution considers unachievable, is not openness in the sense the statement invites readers to take. Accurate on the forecast, misleading on the posture.