Kremlin no longer willing to return any occupied Ukrainian territory as part of potential peace deal, Bloomberg reports

Russia no longer intends to return any occupied Ukrainian territories as part of a potential peace deal, Bloomberg reported, citing sources close to the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin still intends to establish full control over the Donbas, those sources said, and to retain the captured portions of the border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv as “buffer zones.”

Putin abandoned any notion of territorial concessions after the Kremlin concluded that informal understandings reached at the summit between the Russian and U.S. presidents in Anchorage in August 2025 had been broken.

Two of Bloomberg’s sources said Russia is prepared to return to negotiations once it has fully seized Donetsk region. The Defense Ministry assured Putin it could achieve that by the end of 2026. A Bloomberg source close to the Defense Ministry said many Russian military officials consider that timeline unrealistic, arguing that full control over Donbas could only be achieved sometime in 2027.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Bloomberg said the Kremlin toughened its stance as Ukraine intensified long-range strikes inside Russia, including against Moscow and oil refineries, as well as President Donald Trump’s endorsement of a new sanctions bill initiated by the late Senator Lindsey Graham.

Update. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing for journalists on the afternoon of July 22 that Bloomberg’s publication should not be taken seriously. He said the agency’s article “belongs to the category of speculation.”

In June, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that during the Alaska summit, only proposals for ending Russia’s war with Ukraine were discussed, but no agreements were reached. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, noted that if the U.S. had put forward settlement proposals and Russia had agreed to them, one could not say that ”no agreement was reached.”

Putin said that “compromises and certain possibilities” were discussed in Anchorage: “In Anchorage there were indeed no agreements […] The spirit of Anchorage, though it was not embodied in any formal documents, no one put any signatures.”

In early July, Reuters reported that Putin is rejecting proposals for peace talks with Ukraine and will most likely escalate the conflict. According to the agency, Ukraine’s intensified strikes on Russian oil refineries have only strengthened Putin’s resolve to continue combat operations.