This is one reason people who say dictators who start wars to stay in power are wrong. War is an all-consuming exercise, uses up tons of resources that have to be taken from the civilian economy, That stokes discontent.
Resource diversion aside, war requires attention that is diverted from internal security. Praetorians sent to the front lines can’t protect the palace. Every ruler has internal rivals who will goose step and kiss his ring right up to the moment the ruler gets his coup de grace.
While there’s an outside chance Putin knew of this attack and instructed his men to let it through in hopes of pinning it on Ukraine and therefore goosing recruitment for the war, odds are it’s just a consequence of his securitate using all of its manpower and time protecting key supply nodes from Ukrainian spies supplying information to drone operators. Ultimately, wars are destabilizing in the domestic milieu because the state’s hard power is focused on fighting an external enemy while internal rivals are plotting, planning and marshalling their resources to make a bid for the throne.
This is why conquerors often pause even though their armies could make further gains. They need to weed out over-ambitious generals hoping to become rulers in their own right and stabilize a ship of state made unstable by the rise of victorious military commanders (e.g. Prigozhin) with men loyal to them personally. The alternative is to gain huge empires that are then commandeered by military commanders who take power while wiping out the ruling families under whose aegis these gains took place. Alexander and China’s First Emperor are just two examples of great conquerors whose ruling families were killed to the last with their demise.
Not in Russia. Russians are religiously conditioned to sacrifice their very lives to advance the policies of their Tsars. They even have a famous opera about it.
https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/repertoire/opera/susanin1/