On the second day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one of President Vladimir V. Putin's closest aides refused to act on his orders.
Putin ordered that aide, Dmitry N. Kozak, to demand Ukraine’s surrender, according to three people close to Kozak. Kozak refused, insisting he did not understand what the Russian leader wanted to achieve by invading. As the conversation became increasingly heated, Kozak told Putin that he was prepared to be arrested or shot for refusing the order.
Only later did Kozak learn that Putin had put that call on loudspeaker in 2022, making senior officials from the presidential cabinet witnesses to a rare act of disobedience, according to the sources.
Kozak was a lone voice of dissent in Putin’s inner circle, a small crack in his iron grip on power. With so few people willing to challenge him, Putin has established near-total control over how Russia conducts the war. And that’s partly why, nearly four years later, the Russian leader is still able to stick to his hardline demands, even as pressure for a ceasefire grows.
Kozak, 67, resigned as Putin's deputy chief of staff in September, a month after The New York Times reported on his private criticism of the war. In interviews since then, six Russians close to Kozak have described the transformation of Putin's confidant over three decades into a kind of hotbed of anti-war sentiment within the Russian elite. Most spoke on condition of anonymity, given the risk of reprisals for discussing confidential Kremlin policy.
By making his disagreements with the president known within the ruling elite, Kozak is giving voice to a quiet discontent that, according to his interlocutors, is shared by many in Moscow’s business and cultural circles, and even other state officials. This discontent has been further intensified this year by Putin’s refusal to end the war even on favorable terms offered by US President Donald Trump.
"Dmitry Nikolayevich is gone, but the mood is the same," said Alexei A. Venediktov, a prominent Moscow journalist who knows former and current Kremlin officials, including Kozak. "He is important as an indicator."
Kozak, a top state official who broke with the president over the war, still lives in Moscow. He first worked with Putin in the 1990s, when both were senior officials in the St. Petersburg mayor's office, and people who know him say he apparently believes his personal ties to the Russian leader provide him with a degree of security.
Kozak has not publicly voiced his criticisms. His acquaintance, political analyst Arkady Dubnov, said Kozak declined to be interviewed for this article.
However, Dubnov says that events since the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022, have only further solidified Kozak's views. "His assessments, which he presented to Putin on the eve of the start of the military action, have been confirmed with frightening accuracy," said Dubnov, who lives in Israel.
Inner circle
Kozak's hands were shaking as he approached the podium. He explained, occasionally muttering, why the talks with Ukraine were going nowhere. He added that he had more to say, but Putin interrupted him.
"I guess we'll talk about that in private," Kozak said.
It was February 21, 2022. At a televised Security Council meeting in the Kremlin, top Russian officials took turns voicing their support for Putin's impending invasion.
Kozak did not fit into that picture.
He had known Putin longer than almost anyone else in the room. He had led Putin's first reelection campaign, been in charge of preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics, and oversaw the integration of annexed Crimea into Russia.
In early 2022, on the eve of the invasion, Kozak negotiated with Ukraine about a proxy war in the country’s east. In January, he held an eight-hour meeting in Paris, talks that Ukraine said sent a “very positive signal.” Several former Ukrainian and U.S. officials familiar with the talks said they believed Kozak was sincerely trying to find a diplomatic solution, not buying time while Russia prepared for an invasion.
While Putin was massing troops, Kozak drafted a lengthy memorandum outlining the likely negative consequences of war. According to a person with access to the document, the memorandum also warned of the possibility of Sweden and Finland joining NATO, which would prove to be a prophetic prediction.
Kozak addressed the Security Council again on February 21, in a part of the session that was not broadcast on television, according to several people close to him. The Ukrainians will resist, Kozak said. The sanctions will be harsh. Russia's geopolitical position will suffer.
According to people close to Kozak, Putin then ordered all officials except Kozak and the permanent members of the Security Council to leave the room. He asked Kozak to repeat his arguments. He then dismissed everyone except Kozak, who remained at the podium.
Now they were alone under the vault of the St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin, with a distance of about ten meters between them.
"What's the problem?" Putin asked Kozak, according to two people close to Kozak. "Why are you against it?"
Kozak reportedly did not give in. It was the last time the two spoke before Russia began bombing Kiev in the early morning hours of February 24th.
Refusal of orders
Some media outlets reported that, in the hours after the invasion began, Kozak called Andriy Yermak, then-chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and demanded that Kiev capitulate.
Kozak, in conversations with several close associates, claimed that the story was untrue. Instead, he told them, Yermak had called him that day. Kozak said he wanted to work as quickly as possible to achieve peace through negotiations.
By the second day of the invasion, Kozak, according to three people close to him, was negotiating a possible ceasefire agreement with David Arahamia, another Ukrainian official. The deal would have involved Russia guaranteeing Ukraine’s security and withdrawing from all parts of the country except Crimea and the eastern region known as Donbas.
These negotiations infuriated Putin.
On the evening of February 25, Kozak briefed Putin via the Kremlin's secure phone line, the same three sources said.
Putin sharply attacked Kozak for exceeding his authority by discussing territorial issues, and ordered him to inform Kiev that Russia would negotiate only on the surrender of Ukraine. Kozak felt that Putin was abruptly changing his negotiating position. He said that he could not negotiate unless he knew what Russia's ultimate goals were.
Putin dismissed those remarks and ordered Kozak to negotiate in accordance with the instructions. Kozak refused. It was during that conversation, the interlocutors say, that Kozak told Putin that he was ready to be arrested or shot for refusing orders.
By the end of that tense conversation with Putin, Kozak had agreed to inform Ukraine of the Russian demand for capitulation. He called Arahamiya, while Putin was listening in. Arahamiya refused.
The next day, February 26, Putin's position appeared to be changing for the second time, according to the three interlocutors. In the morning, Putin's first deputy chief of staff, Sergei V. Kiriyenko, called Kozak and told him that another Kremlin aide, Vladimir R. Medinsky, would now lead Russia's negotiations with Ukraine.
Late that evening, Medinsky and Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire, arrived at Kozak's home. They told him they were going to Belarus to negotiate with Ukraine based on a new mandate given to them by Putin: to discuss security guarantees, but not Ukraine's borders.
Representatives for Yermak, Arahamiya and Abramovich did not respond to requests for comment. The Kremlin also did not respond.
Challenging the system
Kozak never regained his formal role in Ukraine-related matters. He lost influence to Kiriyenko, who this year also took over Kozak's portfolio in charge of relations with other former Soviet republics.
Still, he didn’t lose his job. He kept an office in the Soviet-era Presidential Administration building, a few blocks from the Kremlin, where, according to several people familiar with the events, he met with informal Western envoys. As they worked out possible peace plans, he smoked cigarette after cigarette. He told them he still had access to Putin, signaling that the Russian president was aware of these secret talks.
At one point, the president asked Kozak to present proposals for improving Russia's economic environment. Several trusted people who saw Kozak's memorandum in response said they were stunned by its contents.
In that document, they say, Kozak proposed that Putin stop the war, begin negotiations with Ukraine, and implement liberalizing reforms in the country. He also proposed that the Russian judiciary become independent from de facto oversight by law enforcement agencies — an almost heretical idea, given the security services' status as the most powerful structures in Russia.
Some of Kozak's interlocutors say they were surprised not only by his proposals, but also by the fact that he was sharing them outside the Kremlin, given the veil of secrecy that usually surrounds Putin. According to them, Kozak seemed concerned about his own legacy and sought to distance himself from Putin.
Konstantin F. Zatulin, a lawmaker in Putin's United Russia party who knows Kozak, described him as someone who remained loyal to Putin. However, he said Kozak was a rare Kremlin aide who "did not hide his opinion."
"In the presidential administration, it is not customary to question the opinion of a superior," Zatulin said.
A confused legacy
Dubnov, an acquaintance of Kozak's who lives in Israel, said Kozak believed he was "working in the service of the state, not Putin's personal interests." Their split, Dubnov said, came after Kozak, with the start of the invasion, "realized that for Putin there are no red lines he is not ready to cross."
"The price the country pays for its leader's grandiose ambitions has become unacceptable" for Kozak, Dubnov said.
Like many members of the Russian elite, Kozak continues to show loyalty to Putin by refraining from any public criticism. And Putin, in turn, has sent signals of a certain loyalty to him.
Kozak traveled to Israel for medical treatment on several occasions, as well as to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. This was a sign of Putin's continued trust, given the restrictions he had imposed on the travel of state officials during the war.
Putin accepted Kozak's resignation in September, which is particularly striking because Putin usually seeks to keep senior officials loyal by appointing them to comfortable but insignificant positions, rather than allowing them to leave the civil service.
Kozak's legacy remains inextricably linked to Putin's.
Leonid P. Romankov, a liberal deputy to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly in the 1990s, remembers Kozak as a “professional” who, unlike many other city officials, tried to stick to the “letter of the law.” Yet he became disillusioned with Kozak for standing aside as Putin dismantled Russian democracy.
"He chose the path of conformity," Romankov said. "He could have realized much earlier where it was all leading."
The article was published in the "New York Times"
Prepared by: A. Š.
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