On a Fano manifold, we prove that the KhlerRicci flow starting from a Khler metric in the anti-canonical class which is sufficiently close to a KhlerEinstein metric must converge in a polynomial rate to a KhlerEinstein metric. The convergence cannot happen in general if we study the flow on the level of Khler potentials. Instead we exploit the interpretation of the Ricci flow as the gradient flow of Perelman's functional. This involves modifying the Ricci flow by a canonical family of gauges. In particular, the complex structure of the limit could be different in general. The main technical ingredient is a Lojasiewicz type inequality for Perelman's functional near a critical point.