What always happens after Russia loses a war: reform from above to recreate a viable state or regime change from below.

After Crimean Loser 1.0 Nicholas I was defeated Alexander II abolished serfdom and welcomes railroad construction and the industrial capitalism that Nicholas had blocked.

After defeat by Japan in 1905, Nicholas II allowed a Duma (which he soon politically castrated) and appointed the modernizer Stolypin as his Prime Minister.

After Finland made a fool of the Red Army in the Winter War, Stalin brought previously purged professional generals such as Rokosovsskiy back to put the Red Army back in rehab.

After the failed Afghanistan War the USSR went home and the USSR fell apart, partly from below, partly from a deal done from above to prevent secessions (the "parade of sovereignties") from spreading into the Russian Republic itself (Tatars, Bashkiris, Yakuts, Uralis).

Neither your appeasing bedwetting, nor Bush I's 1991 Chicken Kiev speech against Ukrainian independence can prevent the structurally-driven further dissolution of the Russian Empire from going further.

Defeat in war, as in Argentina in 1982, France in Algeria in 1958-62, Portugal in its colonial wars in 1961-74, is the fastest route to regime change.

History's patterns are reliable predictors. Lost wars, or even pyrrhic victory bankruptcies, kill authoritarian regimes with revolution and reform democracies with the electoral defeat of ruling elite parties (Churchill's loss to Labour in 1945).