Are they serious? Hard to say, but every public statement has a purpose. It’s serious work trying to understand what Russia’s actions mean.
Both sides have some dark skies ahead. For the Russians, they are bleeding unsustainably and not achieving much. And Trump’s usefulness is about to be curtailed. Xi is probably not convinced of much more progress to keep investing in.
Ukraine is suffering from Russian terror every day and sees some thunderclouds ahead with rising populists in France and Germany that aren’t shy about reducing Ukrainian support in the coming years.
Maybe they’re serious about ending this phase. Long term - that’s another kettle of fish, but…maybe it’s time. Wars are often indecisive and their conclusions unsatisfying. It’s the years after that matter.
We will see how it goes. Right now we don’t know even the date of talks. I think Trump and Co gonna tell about the very thing (what is forbidden attack) in social media. In terms of why Russia is not boosting its defenses? - it is boosting it, but time may be an important factor in it. Since we don’t know yet what is the main essence of this round of talks it is hard to say. Russia always has movement of forces as an option in reserve - abandon something for some other thing, so to say. In other words - move available anti-air from factories to refineries or vise versa or even from front-lines to refineries etc. When the movement of such assets is happening - they cant do anything and could be easily destroyed. So some political coverage is necessary. It is just as an example. But yet again i don’t really know, I am just making assumptions just as we all do. You may be right as well. I hope only for one thing - I hope for Ukraine to win this war. I hope, that US wont force Ukraine to surrender to Putin.