As the Russian war on Ukraine grinds on and the impacts of Ukraine’s resistance and counterattack spread inland in Russia, the conflict is taking its toll not only on Ukrainians but on Russian civilians, in particular, the large but underreported internally displaced population of Russians forced to flee their homes by the conflict. Building on an earlier piece written by the author for RID, this new research article examines the true extent of internal displacement in Russia and the growing challenges of IDPs, with particular focus on Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk, three of the most impacted regions. The article spotlights the inadequacy of official efforts to protect and compensate people displaced by the conflict, reflecting both the absence of the category of "internally displaced persons" in Russian law and Russia's apparent reticence to formally acknowledge the extent of displacement and, thereby, its responsibility toward internally displaced persons. This reticence, the article argues, is linked to increasingly dire national finances, depleted by the cost of the war and international economic sanctions. More fundamentally, however, it reflects the Russian government's unwillingness to acknowledge, even indirectly, that the "special military operation", now in its fifty-sixth month, has not gone according to plan.