Russia's Kremlin decline to confirm if US Special Envoy Witkoff and Kushner will visit Moscow; says the possibility of a peace settlement remains but there are no clear indications of it happening right now

Headlines of this kind are the standard texture of prolonged negotiation cycles: envoys, draft frameworks, and Kremlin non-denials have recurred throughout this conflict without a durable settlement, and the pattern has been for each iteration to trade with diminishing amplitude as the market learns to discount talk absent troop movements or a signed framework. The transmission channel is well established: de-escalation headlines compress the risk premium in European gas, soften crude via the sanctions-and-supply leg, and bid the euro and regional assets, while failure to confirm reverses the move. The distinction worth drawing is between process noise, which this is, and substantive markers such as ceasefire terms, territorial language, or sanctions sequencing, since only the latter has historically re-rated energy and defence durably. The Kremlin's formulation, possibility affirmed but no clear indications, is its customary posture of keeping channels open without conceding momentum. Worth watching is whether a visit is later confirmed and whether any counterpart signals emerge from Kyiv or Washington, as talks have tended to matter only when both sides' rhetoric moves in step.