Better question: How long will Vladimir Putin survive if he doesn’t cut his losses? For the last seven-plus months, analysts and media outlets have asked the same question that NPR poses today, especially after Russia’s complete failure in its initial phase of the war to capture Kyiv. Can Putin survive a settlement that ends in a status quo ante, or worse?

Now that the Ukrainian military has clearly seized the momentum on both ends of the Russian occupation, both questions have become a lot more acute — and perhaps urgent to the point of existential crisis:

If you are following events in Russia and Ukraine closely, you could be forgiven for wondering if Vladimir Putin has backed himself into a corner.

Many thousands of Russians are fleeing the country, trying to avoid being drafted to fight in the war. Phony so-called elections in four Ukrainian provinces, which Russia now says it has annexed, are being mocked in capitals around the world. And on the battlefield, Ukraine keeps winning.

So, where does this leave Putin? And what would happen if he decided to cut his losses and end the war?

The first question is whether Putin would accept that kind of humiliation at all. Don’t count on it, says former ambassador Michael McFaul:

“The conventional wisdom out there, including analysts in our country and around the world, is that Putin can’t accept defeat,” Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014, told NPR. “He will double down, he’ll fight to the end, he might even use nuclear weapons.”

“I’ve known Putin for a long time, written about him for decades. That would be my prediction too.”

However, McFaul also points out that the vast majority of Russians are apolitical and never bought into this war in the first place. If Putin managed to hang onto Crimea in a negotiated settlement, McFaul thinks he could sell that as a least-worst outcome to most of his subjects. If Putin pitched a settlement on the status quo ante — Russian control of Crimea and Donetsk — McFaul worries that world leaders might also embrace that at the expense of Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians.

That is what led Elon Musk to suggest that kind of outcome, but it’s always been unrealistic. The Ukrainian government may have agreed to a status quo ante settlement in the first weeks of the war, but as Russian atrocities have gotten uncovered in liberated towns across the country, the necessity of full liberation has become crystal clear. The animosity toward Russians that has built over the last several months will make it impossible for Zelensky to cut such a peace deal with Putin. That would be the Michael Collins option, and Zelensky knows it.

But it’s almost certainly unrealistic for Putin, too. The collapse of Russian forces in both the Kharkiv and Kherson theaters has created new divisions even among Putin’s supporters — between those who want him to double down and those who want him to triple down. ISW and other sources report that rifts have emerged between Putin’s main bases of support for the war as recriminations have begun flying over the failures of the Russian military:

Russian failures around Lyman galvanized strong and direct criticism of the commander of the Central Military District (CMD), Alexander Lapin, who supposedly commanded the Lyman grouping, as ISW has previously reported.[7] This criticism originated from the siloviki group, spearheaded by Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Kadyrov and Prigozhin represent an emerging voice within the regime’s fighting forces that is attacking the more traditional and conventional approach to the war pursued by Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu and the uniformed military command. The chaotic execution of Putin’s mobilization order followed by the collapse of the Lyman pocket ignited tensions between the more vocal and radical Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, who attacked the MoD and the uniformed military for their poor handling of the war.[8] Putin now finds himself in a dilemma. He cannot risk alienating the Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, as he desperately needs Kadyrov’s Chechen forces and Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine.[9] Nor can he disenfranchise the MoD establishment, which provides the overwhelming majority of Russian military power in Ukraine and the institutional underpinnings needed to carry out the mobilization order and continue the war.

The Kadyrov-Prigozhin incident sparked a rift between the siloviki and the milbloggers, with the milbloggers defending Lapin. Milbloggers are criticizing Kadyrov’s attack on Lapin, claiming that it stems from competition between Lapin and Kadyrov-Prigozhin.[10] The Kremlin did not punish Kadyrov or Prigozhin for their direct attacks on Lapin and the Defense Ministry but has instead deflected blame for the Russian defeat in Kharkiv Oblast onto the Western Military District (WMD). Kremlin-affiliated outlets have even interviewed milbloggers who have painted Lapin as a hero for saving the stranded WMD units in Lyman, likely in an effort to divert responsibility for the Russian defeat there onto recently fired WMD Commander Colonel-General Alexander Zhuravlev.[11] Milbloggers, who had frequently complimented Kadyrov or Prigozhin before this incident, are now more skeptical of the siloviki community, attacking it for being too self-interested.

Fractures are emerging within the Russian milblogger community itself, moreover. Milbloggers have begun increasingly questioning each other’s military credentials and rights to offer recommendations for the Russian Armed Forces.[12] One milblogger complained that commentators without appropriate military experience have been improperly criticizing current military commanders and should be focusing on simply portraying the situation on the frontlines without editorializing.[13] These critiques have been largely aimed at the milblogger discourse following the Russian defeat in Lyman and the Kadyrov-Prigozhin incident.[14] These attacks on some milbloggers’ credentials have drawn responses from milbloggers who have met with Putin himself and are being featured on Kremlin-controlled television channels, who now declare that they are the ones who have shown the true shortcomings of the Russian forces to Putin so that he can address them.[15]

Imagine trying to sell a settlement to these groups at this moment. It would be waving a red flag in front of a war-loving bull. They’re already champing at the bit for changes in the Kremlin, although all three interest groups have been careful so far to remain supportive of Putin himself. If Putin decided to stand down and accept the loss in Ukraine at this moment, how would the siloviki respond? Kadyrov might be tempted to seize control himself in a coup.

However, this itself has another big caveat. The Russian military is not in stasis at the moment — they are getting chewed up and dismantled in both fronts of the war. The news from the Luhansk/Donetsk front has made headlines ever since the collapse around Kharkiv, but the Kherson theater suddenly looks like it’s collapsing on the Russians as well:

Animated GIF showing progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast over the past 72 hours for @TheStudyofWar.

Ukrainian forces have liberated over 1000 square kilometers in north Kherson over the past 3 days. https://t.co/bIb2tF61Xh pic.twitter.com/BU6w8IghZA

— George Barros (@georgewbarros) October 5, 2022

That’s a fast retreat by Russians over three days, and they will have to fall back all the way to Nova Kakhova to go back north and east to egress points out of the region. Kherson may end up getting squeezed from the north and east in the next few days, and the Russians would have to get out soon to save themselves if the Ukrainian momentum continues in this theater. If Kherson gets liberated, suddenly Crimea looks at risk of slipping out of Russian control too, and if so the main strategic gain Putin made over the past decade will evaporate.

If Putin wants to make a deal, he’ll have to make it soon, or not at all. Nuclear weapons won’t settle this either, even if Putin’s military could operate in a theater with tactical-nuke use, which they clearly cannot now. With his army in ruins and his navy a non-factor, Putin no longer can shape the political battlegrounds any more than he can shape the literal battlegrounds. All his choices look bad, and it’s almost certain that Putin won’t escape the consequences of any of those choices.

Update: I had “losses” twice in the headline, so I edited it after publication. I hate redundant redundancies.