Inside the Kremlin's Rehearsal for Retreat

A planning document leaked from inside Putin's administration is the clearest sign yet that some of his own people are looking for the exit

Dossier Center has published what may be one of the most revealing leaks from inside the Kremlin since the start of the war on Ukraine.

According to a presentation prepared in late winter 2025 by people close to Sergey Kiriyenko — the official charged with domestic politics inside Putin's administration — some members of that administration have for several months been working on a plan to "sell" the idea of a negotiated peace to the Russian people.

The document contains warnings about economic exhaustion, manpower shortages, falling public patience, drone attacks deep inside Russia, rising pressure on businesses, and the possibility that continuing the war could eventually require full mobilization and a complete transition to a wartime economy.

One phrase in particular stands out: “You must know when to stop. Excess is defeat. Continuing the special military operation would become a Pyrrhic victory.”

While the peace scenario described in the document does not go nearly far enough to be considered a just end to the war, it is also a far cry from Putin’s original stated war aims. Ukraine would continue to exist, Zelenskyy would remain in office. Russia would keep Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, but would withdraw from Sumy and Kharkiv, freeze the front elsewhere, and quietly abandon any fantasies about taking Kyiv.

The main problem addressed in the document is how to sell this plan to the various factions of the population. At the start of the war, the regime promised a rapid, sweeping triumph, with the propagandists speaking of “taking Kyiv in three days” and Russian troops being “welcomed as liberators”. Of course, none of that materialized — but the messaging held onto the idea that only a complete victory would suffice. Through that lens, any concessions at all would be read as a failure.

Instead of a war against Ukraine, propagandists are now being told to frame the war as a “successful” confrontation with the “collective West” (as if they haven’t been doing it since the beginning — Putin’s literal video address that started the war was full of grievances about the West’s betrayal). Russian, they will say, has halted NATO expansion, survived the sanctions, and emerged from the ordeal stronger and more united. Never mind the fact that NATO’s border with Russia is now much longer than it was before the war, the Baltic Sea is now a NATO lake, and the economy is in such bad shape that even Putin has been forced to acknowledge it in public.

The Machine Prepares to Eat Its Own Patriots

Perhaps the most revealing section of the document concerns how the plans would be sold to the ultra-patriotic Z-community. The same bloggers and commentators who spent years demanding escalation are now described by regime officials as emotional “armchair patriots” who may need to be marginalized if they oppose peace. In other words, the machine is preparing to consume some of its own creators.

The authors of the document acknowledge that war veterans have legitimate reasons to be angry with the regime, so they have made plans to prevent any kind of uprising — namely, by channeling veterans’ energy in “useful” directions such as memorial events, reconstruction projects, involvement in politics, or foreign mercenary work with the “Africa Corps,” formerly known as the late Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group.

Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, are apparently supposed to receive a carefully managed “thaw”: a little more humor on television, selective amnesties, softer cultural messaging, and permission to use the word “peace” again. There’s no mention of lifting any of the restrictions on free speech, or of restoring any of the independent media outlets that were banned. Just a few steps the regime hopes will lower the temperature.

The Role of Putin

There’s no saying Putin would agree to such a plan, given that the whole point of the war in the first place was to keep him in power, and his approval ratings are currently plummeting. He might see any concessions as too much of a risk to himself. No, the really important thing is that people around Putin are now talking about the possibility of a negotiated peace at all, albeit one that’s still far too skewed in Moscow’s favor.

More than four years in, some within the Kremlin are starting to realize what most sensible people knew from the start: endless war is dangerous, not only for Ukraine, but for Russia and the regime too.