Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy plans to meet US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on December 28 in what he is billing as a possible breakthrough meeting to end the war in Ukraine. The meeting comes as speculation swirls that Russian President Vladimir Putin may step down in favour of a candidate that is more acceptable to the West is a ceasefire deal is agreed.

Progress in the peace talks appears to be moving forward with Zelenskiy saying the mooted upcoming meeting could be significant and a peace deal could be closed before the end of this year. As bne IntelliNews reported a lot of progress has been made in recent weeks during intense talks at a Berlin meeting on December 14-15 and then a Miami meeting on December 20-21.

Zelenskiy has submitted a revised 20-point peace plan (20PPP), submitted to the Kremlin on Christmas Eve to the Kremlin, after these talks which is currently being considered by the Kremlin. However, despite the progress, the two sides remain at loggerheads over the key issues of land and security deals.

Zelenskiy didn’t improve the atmosphere in his Christmas Day address as talks approach an apex by saying he hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin dies. "Today, we all have one dream, and we make one wish for all of us," the president told Ukrainians in a video address. "'I hope he dies,' everyone will say to themselves."

Expectations that a breakthrough in the talks might be close have been further bolstered by the Kremlin’s decision to postpone Putin’s annual Federal Assembly speech that he is constitutionally obliged to make each year. The speech was previously postponed in 2022 after the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) suffered a massive setback with the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)’s Kharkiv incursions after breaking through Russian defensive lines. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this year’s speech would be delivered “when its content is ready.”

“This time the reason is abundantly clear - the Kremlin is waiting for the outcome of peace talks and will operate on that basis,” journalist and bne IntelliNews columnist Leonid Ragozin said in a social media post. “If peace is reached, it will be a victorious speech outlining the postwar political framework. In my personal opinion (which you are welcome to dismiss), there is a possibility of Putin stepping down at this point (or fairly soon after) because he can deem his historical mission accomplished and his personal future very safe. The best moment for him to do so.”

Ragozin goes on to speculate that Putin could step aside in favour of a “a leader who will be more palatable to the West and less polarising at home.” That tallies with recent speculation that the former deputy head of the presidential administration and Putin-loyalist, Dmitri Kozak, may replace Putin.

“Mysterious leaks in the NYT and RBC painting Dmitry Kozak as exactly that kind of leader might give a clue - at least in terms of what political ideas the Kremlin feels necessary to feel out at the moment,” says Ragozin.

Gap remains wide

On December 24, Bloomberg reported that the Kremlin had a number of objections to Ukraine’s revised 20PPP submitted to the Kremlin on Christmas Eve.

The 20PPP does not guarantee the non-expansion of Nato or a neutral status for Ukraine if it joins the EU – both key must-have demands for Russia. Putin reiterated twice during his live Direct Line annual meet-the-people press conference the previous week that "the promises made to us regarding non-expansion of Nato" were ignored.

It is also dissatisfied with the high (800,000 men) post-war limit on the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and the lack of restrictions on the types of weapons, which have been part of the Kremlin’s demands since the failed 2022 Istanbul peace deal.

There's also uncertainty regarding the status of the Russian language, sanctions relief, and the fate of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR)’s $300bn of frozen assets.

However, the main stumbling block remains Russia’s continuing insistence that Ukraine surrender the remainder of Donbas not occupied by the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR).

Ukraine's current proposal for a mutual withdrawal of heavy weapons from the demilitarized zone in Donbas "by 5, 10, 40 kilometres," which Zelenskiy presents as a concession, is in fact no such thing, because it still relies on the demarcation line along the contact line.

The Bloomberg report was based on sources in the Kremlin, however, Russian foreign minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, denied the veracity of the report saying Bloomberg has “no reliable sources in the Kremlin – only unreliable ones.” The Kremlin has yet to formally comment on the 20PPP.

Kozak to replace Putin?

Some commentators are asking if a deal is done, is it possible that Putin could stand down and make way for a more liberal president as his legacy will be secure as far as Russians are concerned.

Trump has made it clear that he wants to do business with Russia – a point underscored by the fact that Russia’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been almost entirely sidelined in the ongoing peace talks that are being led by head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, a fund manager, not a diplomat. The same is true for the American side where Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also been sidelined and the talks are being led by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, another businessman.

Putin has also offered several tantalising deals such as access to Russia’s copious rare earth metals (REMs) deposit as well as reviving ExxonMobil access to Russia’s oil and gas deposits, among other things. As part of this deal Putin is also demanding significant sanctions relief.

The Wall Street Journal detailed some of the business deals on the table in an article entitled “Make money not war” earlier this month that included:

Major US–Russia Business Proposals

·       Frozen assets for investment: $300bn in frozen Russian reserves to fund US–Russia projects and Ukraine reconstruction.

·       Arctic mineral cooperation: Joint extraction of Arctic resources as strategic partnership.

·       Space industry collaboration: Proposed Mars mission with SpaceX.

·       Rare-earth and energy deals: Aimed at reshaping EU energy and weakening Western unity.

Notable Business Initiatives

·       Exxon–Rosneft: Secret talks on rejoining Sakhalin gas project.

·       Todd Boehly: Exploring Lukoil asset purchases.

·       Elliott Management: Interested in Russian gas pipeline stake.

·       Timchenko group: Offering gas and rare-earth concessions in Russia.

·       Gentry Beach: Seeking 9.9% in Novatek’s Arctic LNG project, pending sanctions relief.

·       Stephen P. Lynch: Bidding on Nord Stream 2 via Swiss auction; paid Trump-linked lobbyist.

Other Proposals

·       US–Russia Arctic cooperation: Oil, gas, and transport development.

·       Prisoner swap: Proposed major exchange outside official channels.

·       Ukraine workforce plan: Retrain soldiers for AI data centre jobs.

·       Tariff exemption: 10-year US tariff break to support Ukraine’s economy.

However, a new tantalising possibility has emerged: Putin may step aside for a more liberal president that would oversee this new business partnership with the US, should a peace deal be agreed.

One possible candidate is Dmitri Kozak, until recently the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential and one of Putin’s longest serving and most loyal deputies, who quit in September.

Born in Soviet Ukraine's Kirovohrad Oblast in 1958, Kozak is known as a loyal and highly efficient manager, who is not associated with any of the Kremlin fractions nor oligarchs. He knows Putin from the 1990s when they both worked in the Sobchak administration in St Petersburg.

Kozak has had many key jobs under Putin. For example, Kozak was put in charge of rebuilding Chechnya after the end of the second war and famously accused Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of stealing over a billion dollars of budget money in a leaked report at the time. He then managed the administration of the Crimea after its annexation in 2014. He was also put in charge of relations with Ukraine prior to the war and independently cut a ceasefire deal in the first month after the war started, which Putin rejected as his war goals had already expanded at the time.

However, over the last year Kozak has been increasingly sidelined by the head of the presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko, who was hailed as a “young reformer” when he was briefly as Prime Minister in 1998 only to oversee Russia’s financial meltdown that year.

Kozak’s name came up again this month after The New York Times (NYT) ran a profile of Kozak, who had authored an extensive and extremely liberal reform blueprint for the next stage of reforms, RBC reported a few days after the NYT profile. Kozak would be a welcome change from Putin and someone the West could do business with.

Kozak’s plan, as published by RBC, included measures to deal with the following problems:

• development of technologies in the world and, against this background, the risk of technological backwardness;
• threat of a complete trade embargo;
• climate change;
• demographic and migration trends;
• the threat of exacerbation of interethnic and interfaith contradictions;
• the entry into social and political life of new generations, whose values ​​may diverge from the guidelines of state policy;
• the threat of a decline in living standards against the backdrop of the degradation of social and industrial infrastructure;
• distortion of the structure of economic growth;
• ignoring the personal rights and interests of citizens.

According to Kozak, the answer to these threats could be a "significantly updated and attractive democratic model of Russia's development, including by eliminating the mistakes of Western democracies" with the introduction of modernized mechanisms and institutions for the functioning of the state and society, RBC reported.

A possible dream team in this scenario would include former finance minister and the architect of Russia’s reforms Alexey Kudrin as a new Prime Minister, who was dubbed “the best finance minister in the world” during his heyday in the noughties.

The NYT profile and Kozak’s ousting from the Kremlin after decades of spotless service to Putin are seen by some as preparation for his possible presidency by putting some distance between himself and the Putin administration to bolster his credentials as an “independent” candidate. He is considered a dove on Ukraine and reportedly was one of the few Kremlin voices that actively opposed the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Certainly, the timing of the profile by the western press, which has largely ignored Kozak for years, has raised questions amongst Russia-watchers.

Putin stepping back

As bne IntelliNews reported, Putin, who is now 73-years old and has been in power for 26 years, has become tired and slowly retreated from the day-to-day business of running the country, relying on an increasingly small inner circle for advice, according to bne IntelliNews Kremlin sources. He has largely handing over the management of the economy to the extremely competent macroeconomic team, headed by Kudrin, CBR governor Elvia Nabiullina and Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

After taking office in 2000, Putin tried to micro-manage the activity of the oligarchs with his hybrid ZAO Kremlin model. The oligarchs had built up the powerful so-called FIGs (financial-industrial groups) and Putin would call them in for regular one-on-one meetings to make sure their investment plans dovetailed with the Kremlin’s own industrial development plans.

At the same time, the Kremlin kept control of key sectors like banking, but set up competing pairs, such as retail banking giant Sberbank that was put in direct competition with VTB bank, both the biggest in the sector and both owned by the state. Competition was encouraged to gain market efficiencies but leave the Kremlin in control of systemically important sectors. That competition goad was further enhanced by allowing a raft of smaller privately-owned banks who operated on purely market principles to keep the banking behemoths on their toes.

The structure of the oil sector is the same: the biggest company is the state-owned Rosneft, but the second- largest is privately-owned Lukoil. The third and fourth largest companies are state-owned Gazprom Neft, and the privately-owned Surgutneftegas.

However, this model was abandoned after the shock of the 2008 global financial crisis and Putin switched to promoting the so-called stoligarchs – a small group of super powerful oligarchs, personal friends of Putin from his St Petersburg days. These men, including Arkady Timchenko and the Rotenberg brothers, Arkady and Boris, were given state-funded mega projects such as the construction of the Kerch bridge linking Russia to the Crimea that Putin could overee personally, but left most of the rest of the economy to function under market conditions supervised by the macroeconomic team.

Corruption remains rife, but it appears that with this system Putin could personally manage it and keep the stoligarchs' profits-taking to “tolerable” levels. As bne IntelliNews has reported, one of the ironies of the war is that it has forced root-and-branch reforms to crack down on the still endemic corruption as, in its hunt for more military spending revenues, the Kremlin allows corruption amongst the elites but demands greater efficiencies from the rest of the economy. Since the war started the tax take has increased by 20%, while the tax burden has only increased by 2%.

That reform was overseen by the former investment banker Mikhail Mishustin, who was promoted from head of the tax service to Prime Minister on the strength of that success. The government also just updated what started out as Plan K, a blueprint for reforms drawn up by Kudrin, that has now become the National Projects 2.2 in December 2025 and lays out more details for the so far successful liberal economic reforms to improve the Russian quality of life.

If Kozak were to takeover then this liberal reform bent in the Kremlin would be strengthened and Putin’s repressions would be weakened. The focus on economic development would be strengthened as highlighted by Kozak’s reform plan. Alternative candidates from the so-called siloviki fraction, the security services that are the backbone of Putin’s power, such as spymaster and close Putin associate Nikolai Patrushev, would take the country in the other direction.