"I don't think its performance can be explained away by distillation or anything like that." even if you assume that Dean Ball (who is nontechnical and has not actually worked to train models (https://www.deanball.com/)) is honest (which he has a financial incentive to not be) - is entirely compatible with saying that Kimi was heavily distilled by Claude.
At this point, I'm just pointing out the many lies, fallacies, and failures to read at a high-school level that you're committing.