Peskov accused the NYT of misinterpreting his words about the presidential elections in Russia

The American newspaper The New York Times (NYT) misreported the words of press secretary Dmitry Peskov about the likely victory of the incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin in the elections in 2024. About this declared himself a representative of the Kremlin.

August 6 NYT published an article with quotes from Peskov, in which he called the Russian elections “an expensive bureaucracy.” In addition, as follows from the material of the American newspaper, the Kremlin spokesman announced the re-election of the president from 2024 “with more than 90% of the vote.”

“This was absolutely incorrectly interpreted by the author of this article,” Peskov told the TASS news agency. A Kremlin spokesman confirmed the meeting with journalist Roger Cohen and specified that the election response implied an “unprecedented” consolidation of society around the president.

“And already now we can say that if he is nominated, he will be re-elected with a huge advantage, and the elections themselves, theoretically, are just extra expenses,” Peskov said.

The NYT text also provides Peskov’s response to the special operation. He stated that there were no grounds for a peace agreement with Ukraine and said that the military operation would continue “for the foreseeable future.”

Peskov has repeatedly pointed out the prematureness of talks about a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. At the end of June, a Kremlin representative noted that there are certain efforts to bring the percentage of achievement of the goals of a special military operation into a political and diplomatic channel, but so far there are no prerequisites for this, so the special operation continues. Ukraine currently has a law that prohibits any negotiations with Russia.

On August 5, two-day talks between national security advisers and political advisers began in Jeddah, where Ukraine should present its “peace formula”. The talks in Saudi Jeddah are attended by high-ranking officials from 42 countries, including the United States, China and India. However, Russia does not take part in these negotiations.

Peskov said that Moscow would monitor these negotiations. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, noted that if Saudi Arabia’s talks on Ukraine “help the West understand the whole dead end” of the plan [президента Владимира] Zelensky”, then they will not be useless.”