I'm sure I could find some "western" media sources to contradict your cherries, shit, I could probably find Russian sources for that. Except that doesn't really matter for you, does it?

Here's the reality though. Just within the last year Putin had to kill at least two high-profile opponents, one who had tanks, and one who was rotting in prison seemingly harmless. The gnome is beyond paranoid and doesn't appear to have an actual successor. If he croaks there will be chaos. You seem to have a lot of faith that the war will continue as if nothing happened, even though history, including Russia's own history (e.g. the Afghanistan clusterfuck or Lenin's "revolution") seems to indicate that wars tend to lose priority in case of internal chaos and/or struggle for power.

But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're young enough to not know any better... happens when a penis potato stays in power for 20+ years.