How to redirect a old uri without redirecting :)

Hello! I’m a newb at this mod-rewrite thing and I’ve searched google high and low and can’t quite find the information I need, so I was hoping some kind soul here could point me in the right direction.

My wordpress is installed and functions. In my .htaccess I started with:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

so uris like https://www.geeksrus.com/feed/ works, or https://www.geeksrus.com/index.php?feed=rss2 also works.

So far, so good ??

Now I’d like my old URI for my 5 years old blog, https://www.geeksrus.com/index.xml Ok I know the url sucks, but its what i had.

So I added after I dunno 20 hours of frustration and many google searches:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(([^/]+/)*)index\.xml\ HTTP/
rewriterule index\.xml$ https://www.geeksrus.com/feed/ [R=302,L]

Now this works, but the effect is a redirect, so if someone subscribes to https://www.geeksrus.com/index.xml, their newsreader or itunes sees https://www.geeksrus.com/feed/

I’d like to keep the wordpress URL hidden and just serve up the proper content on the old, now non-existant URI.

Any tips for a weary person?

Thanks!

Steve