Are we witnessing the last days of Vladimir Putin?

It was meant to be a short, quick war. The special military operation Vladimir Putin began in February 2022 continues with no end in sight, while cracks have appeared on Putin's seemingly strong façade.

Russian oligarch, restaurateur, and mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, was one of the seemingly reliable allies of Vladimir Putin in the battleground and in peacetime. Until he wasn't.

The chef turned into mercenary chief decided on June 23 that he had enough of an unwinnable war and turned his guns on Moscow.

In the end, the head of the Wagner Group agreed to leave Russia and go to Belarus, while the Russian justice system dropped all charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin. Putin won this time, but some believe the writing is on the wall for the lonely man in the Kremlin.

The Russian invasion to Ukraine has turned Putin into an international outcast. However, the President of Russia seems to not only weakened his relationships around the globe but at home too.

At home, the Russian President is facing harsher criticism than he had ever seen before.

In September 2022, dozens of city council members in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere signed a petition for Putin to step down due to the disastrous consequences of his “special operation”. According to DW, went as far as accusing him of treason.

Even people that are ideologically close to Putin have started to second-guess him. The New York Times highlighted that pro-Russia Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov commented over Telegram on “mistakes” made during the conflict in Ukraine.

This criticism was even shared on mainstream Russian television, something very rare, to say the least.

According to The Guardian, the coverage of the war by the Russian state media has been forced to evolve. People no longer believe that it will be an easy, simple military operation and have been forced to open up to some form of criticism.

The Communist Party of Russia, generally loyal to Putin, also has publicly stated its discontent. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has demanded that the government officially declare war on Ukraine and start a “general mobilization”.

Zyuganov's wish seems to have come true with Putin's call for a “partial mobilization”, including calling military reservists to the front and a financial boost to weapons manufacturing, according to CNBC.

The New York Times speculated the possibility that a palace coup might oust the Russian leader. Former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, who currently resides in Israel, believes that Russian oligarchs might be open to a regime change if losses in Ukraine continue.

“Strength is the only source of Putin's legitimacy,” Gallyamov told The New York Times. “And in a situation in which it turns out that he has no strength, his legitimacy will start dropping toward zero.”

The bigger question is who would succeed Putin. For some time, Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu seemed like the most likely candidate, but his public image is forever connected to the state of the war in Ukraine. And so far it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

Speaking of public image, available polls seem to show that Putin still enjoys lots of support from the Russian people. So, maybe his apparent weakness has an element of wishful thinking coming from Western eyes.

What is true is that despite the Kremlin's reversal of fortune in the Ukrainian battleground, Putin still remains standing. Though who knows for how long.