It's likely to be a palace coup if propaganda can be countered
Mike Eckel, 22 – reporter, RFE/RL “Anger Over Russia's Battlefield Defeats Bursts Into The Open, Posing A Challenge For Putin” 10/3, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-battlefield-defeats-ukraine-putin-challenges/32063612.html
Now with the Ukrainians' weekend victory in Lyman, a Donetsk region city and strategic rail hub southeast of Kharkiv, that criticism is bursting into wider public view, hitting the front pages of some of Russia's biggest newspapers.
That's a serious problem for Russia's military brass -- and potentially for the Kremlin.
"I wouldn't predict a palace coup imminently. If there were one, we'd almost be the last ones to know about it, these things happen pretty swiftly when they do," said James Nixey, who heads the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London. "But obviously, there is increasing discontent in the upper Russian echelons about the course of the war, and that is being manifested in various ways, people can’t hold it in."
"The problem is Putin's grip in all sorts of ways is too strong for people to mobilize and consolidate and form an alliance, to move against him," he told RFE/RL. "I personally think...the Russian elite has never been as at risk of collapse quite frankly than it is now."