Considering the freakish outcome Yevgeny Prigozhin's armed rebellion has already produced (Prigozhin heading to "exile" in Belarus, Putin actually not killing him and somehow staying in power himself), Vladimir Putin might want to consider a history lesson:
On a previous occasion, there a major defeat of non-Soviet military forces caused massive political upheaval in an autocratic Russian government, and it was the Russo-Japanese War. What ultimately followed it was an abortive revolution in 1905, and although it was an abortive revolution it caused opponents of the Czarist regime (ranging from the Constitutional Democratic [i.e., Cadet] party to the Social Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) to double down in their efforts to overthrow (or at least limit) the power of Czar Nicholas II.
Another series of catastrophic failures against the German Army during World War I made things even worse, and although other factors were in play (severe social and economic inequity, the autocratic nature of the Czarist regime, you name it) those military defeats showed what a paper tiger the Russian Imperial army was. Could they suppress domestic dissent during peacetime? Of course. But could they do it after they were obliterated in military combat against the Deutsches Heer? Hardly.
For a number of reasons I outlined above, Putin might be able to stay in power, but his seat behind his desk in the Kremlin is a lot less sturdy than it was in February 2022 when all of this started. And the only person he has to blame for that is himself.
