He officially resigned at his own request, but the past years showed that he gradually lost part of his powers and his face practically disappeared from the media.
“Kozak probably understands that in the power structure, where everyone says Putin what he wants (heard), there is no longer a place for him,” commented the departure of Putin’s co -worker for a Russian independent web source close to the Kremlin.
Twenty -five years after Putin’s side
Kozak was one of the people who practically built the power structure of Russian politics. A graduate of the Leningrad State University of Leningrad’s career was started by the Mayor of St. Petersburg Anatolija Sobčak.
Since 1991 he has led the legal department of the St. Petersburg City Council, later the Mayor’s Law Committee. At the Town Hall, Kozak met Putin, who at that time was a reindeer advisor and was the head of the Foreign Relations Committee.
After Sobčak’s defeat in the elections in the mid -1990s, Kozakov and Putin’s roads broke up for time. After Putin became Russian Prime Minister in 1999, Kozak headed to Moscow – Putin offered him the place of the head of the Government Office.
As Meduza writes in May 2002, Putin, this time as president, decided to make Kozak the Attorney General, but at the last moment he changed his mind and Dmitry Kozak finally won the post of deputy head of the presidential administration. “In this position, he basically became one of the main architects of Putin’s vertical power structure,” Meduza wrote.
Over the years, while Putin was president – and Prime Minister – Kozak has replaced several important posts in the executive, supervised important reforms or the construction of facilities for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. For some time he also supervised the Russian energy sector and the integration of Crimea into Russia.
The ideologue was replaced by a pragmatist
Kozaka honey sources were described as Putin’s “lieutenant” and crisis manager. According to them, the collaborator of the Kremlin chief was able to embark on the problem solving and “take into account not only the interests of the government, but also its partners and even opponents”. When it was necessary, he was supposed to say not Vladimir Putin himself.
At the beginning of 2020, Kozak got a new post – he was entrusted with supervision of unrecognized “Republics” in the east of Ukraine.
He replaced Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s ideologue of the nickname “Shadow Cardinal”. Some experts that Kozak is a more flexible negotiator who is willing to proceed with compromises, but did not hear that Moscow would have changed the course in relation to Ukraine.
Also, according to the daily, Kozak, unlike Surkov, the question of the so -called. He watched the separatist republics more pragmatically. “An unresolved conflict in the east of Ukraine is a problem for him, which is dragging resources and brakes Moscow’s efforts to normalize relations with the West,” the Russian website wrote in January 2020.
He was supposed to negotiate that Kiev would give up NATO. It wasn’t enough for Putin
Eventually came February 2022. After the Russian troops invaded the whole of Ukraine, Russian President Kozaka de facto deprived his duties at the time and cut out from the information. The resources to which the web appealed was attributed to Putin’s unwillingness to resolve the conflict with Ukraine diplomatic way and bet on military power. Kozak, who as a bureaucrat promoted the way of negotiations in the so -called. Normandy format and allegedly believed that negotiations only needed for a long time was in disfavor.
„Papa (Father, some Russian officials, so they indicate Putin, note red) has been set differently. In the Security Council (Kozaka), they cut off quite grossly, ”he quoted the web in May 2022 a source among the high -ranking Russian offices. Nevertheless, some expected Kozak to continue to negotiate the fighting.
The name of Dmitry Kozaka subsequently disappeared completely from the media and briefly flashed in them in autumn 2022.
At that time, the agency came up with a report that according to her sources, Kozak was supposed to convince Putin – it was shortly after Russia triggered the invasion – that he and Ukraine managed to pre -agree that Kiev would resign his direction to NATO. That is, exactly what Moscow demanded from the Ukrainians. However, after submitting the agreement, the head of the Kremlin was to be told that the concessions his collaborator have not sufficient and that he expanded his goals to annexation of part of the Ukrainian territory. “The result was the cancellation of the agreement,” Reuters said.
The Kremlin then denied this in response and Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that what Reuters claims to have her sources has “absolutely nothing to do with reality”.
Putin was to advise to start negotiating on peace
Three years later, in August 2025, the diary reported that Dmitry Kozak was supposed to suggest Vladimir Putinov to stop the war against Ukraine and start conducting peace talks.
He also added that Kozak is probably the only high representative in Putin’s neighborhood, who openly talks about his disagreement with the war, although he has never spoken this criticism publicly.
“Kozak’s insistence seems to be Putin, which is largely surrounded by people who support his hard demands against Ukraine, does not warm up. However, it reflects the frustration of a part of the Moscow elite from Putin’s unwillingness to make compromises in the war and increasingly uncontrolled power of security services,” wrote the New York Times.
Referring to his sources in the Kremlin, the daily also wrote that Kozak, despite losing influence, practically still maintained access to Putin. This was supposed to suggest that the Kremlin chief continued to maintain the principles of personal loyalty to his own, and secondly, the goat could still fulfill the role of the intermediary in informal contacts with the West.
According to sources, NYT was often supposed to speak to Westerners to “give him arguments.” In translation – to give him some ideas, how to convince Putin to change the course.
Dmitry Kozak suddenly ended in September. According to Kozakov, the end in office suggests that Vladimir Putin and its surroundings want to continue the war against Ukraine.
But he believes that Kozak’s departure has nothing to do with his anti -war attitude. According to him, Putin’s long -time collaborator is most likely to leave for changes in the presidential administration related to the redistribution of the spheres of influence.
