According to Nikolay Petrov, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking at the possible failure of his government "within the coming year".

In a paper with the none-too-subtle title "Putin's Downfall: The Coming Crisis of the Russian Regime", Petrov says Putin's regime "is unsustainable".

"It has no capacity to reform, and faces growing economic woes, crumbling infrastructure, and warring elites," Petrov writes.

He points to the notable shift towards military action as the Putin government's prime means of legitimizing its power, something that has only become evident since the Crimea-Ukraine standoff exploded in 2014.

Before that, Petrov says, Putin and his government were looking "fairly stable and could last for several years without profound change".

With sanctions and energy crises hitting the country's bottom line and elites, the only ace in Putin's deck is Russia's military might, and in the past year, it's been increasingly flexed, both at home and abroad. Now, the country is actively, almost openly aggressively, bolstering activity in Ukraine, Chechnya, Syria, Kaliningrad, the Scandinavian border, and the Arctic Circle.