Putin Reportedly Placed Two FSB Heads Under House Arrest

The way I see it, at the moment, if he can't turn Ukraine to Belarus, he can only retreat looking like a winner if Ukraine gives him Donbass and Crimea. If he retreats without even gaining anything, then 1) the informed Russians will know their leader lost a war, 2) NATO, etc. also knows what it takes to defeat him; and 3) he'll be paranoid as hell that NATO knows his army is beatable and that they'll invade Russia.

Regardless, with a Ukraine occupation or a retreat, the economic sanctions won't be lifted, because he can't just say "Oops, I messed up, can we get back together?". Even if the European governments want to do that, their voters would topple them at the next elections (this might be a too simplistic model, some of the EU dictatorships might be able to do what they want and stay in power, but e.g. Polish voters will probably never accept normalizing relationships). IMO, lifting of sanctions is only palatable to US/EU-voters if there's a humiliating armistice (like Germany after WW2), but in Putin's eyes that would be equal to a defacto occupation of Russia anyway, and he'd probably launch nukes before accepting such a thing.

Regime change would be an answer, but it seems like the entire Russian state is a Mafia organization, and the next guy, who'd be from this Mafia, would also need to be a strongman to keep it under control, and that would still mean an anti-West stance. It'd be amazing to see someone like Navalny be elected to replace him, but in my view (and remember, I don't know what I'm talking about) the Mafia is too strong for that to ever happen. Unless of course there are foreign "peace keeping" forces, which again, IMO, will only happen after nukes.