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What exactly are the stakes? What exactly would happen to Russia that would be so intolerable if they did give up and just went home? Would it really be so bad?
Putin would lose credibility and probably his life.
Could you (or someone) expand on this? Why would a quasi-dictator be likely to lose his position/life over a failed war?
Putin is indeed a quasi-dictator whose control of Russia is based in substantial part on his control of the Russian security state. However, it's important to remember that these structures are made up of actual people, who in fact might choose not to cooperate given the right circumstances, causing that control structure to melt away entirely.
"A failed war" is one of the biggest potential causes for subordinates to question the competence of their superiors. A terror-infused security state is likely to hold together somewhat longer than other structures, as the penalties for being the first to step out of line are much higher, but it's also more brittle--once that preference cascade starts, it moves with blinding speed and totality.
Will that preference cascade be what brings down Putin? Maybe; it's up there with "randomly dies of non-window causes" and "resigns peacefully" as potential endgames. Will it happen any time soon? No idea.
IIRC, literally no Soviet or Russian leader has ever been killed in modern times (e.g. post WWII). This despite Russia being involved in quite a few wars. Even just looking post-collapse, we see exactly one leader who lost a war: Boris Yeltsin ordered a ceasefire just a couple months before an election - he won. He survived 7 years after leaving office, and (afaik) didn't suffer at all for having lead Russia to its first military defeat.
You might be right that losing a war is theoretically a potential cause of a coup. But, from what I've gathered, Putin has significantly more power than Yeltsin, so why should he be worried about literally being killed for simply not winning a war?
For the purposes of my analysis, I'm bucketing together two outcomes that are different, but I think are sufficiently similar for our purposes--"dissatisfied elements within Putin's regime kill him" and "dissatisfied elements within Putin's regime force him into retirement." In both cases, Putin is no longer in power due to losing control of the Russian security state, and the loss of control came from within the Russian security state. (I'm also agnostic on whether the dissatisfied elements reject what they see as Putin's military overreach or Putin's insufficient resolve--those each lead to very different futures, but share the "Putin is no longer in charge" aspect.)
Ok, but, again - if literally nothing bad happened to Yeltsin, why would anyone expect something bad to happen to the much more secure Putin? Heck, a literal economic depression occurred under Yeltsin, and (afaict) this didn't see him forced into retirement or killed.
Like, it seems like we have one comparable historical event and one far worse historical event - both under someone with a far weaker grip on power. An no "dissatisfied elements" did anything as far as we can tell...
I mean, I guess there's a chance Putin gets removed from power because of this, but it seems like a pretty remote one.
Yeltsin wasn’t a dictator and he had a clear line of succession. Neither are true of Putin. Also, obviously the First Chechen War was of vastly lower stakes for Russia than the war in Ukraine, and Russia didn’t decisively lose it (they even went back and won later). All of these are clear reasons why Putin would be more likely to be killed.
Those are good points. I still think him living is much more likely; but you've given me significant pause.
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