Even as it continues the war in Ukraine, Russia faces serious challenges: While Kremlin insiders concede that the economy is reaching a crisis point, Ukraine’s recent drone attacks have created long lines at the gas pump and other hardships for the general population, polls point to increasing public dissatisfaction, and the war has now persisted longer than World War I (a war that ended badly for those who hold power in Russia).

Putin talks tough and shows no sign of backing down. Yet, given the challenges his country faces, why not seek a negotiated end to the war? One distinct possibility: Putin may well believe that his rule could be threatened by an unsatisfactory end to the war. Whenever—and however—this war ends, it is hard to imagine a scenario that does not involve a harsh reckoning by the Russian people over the costs, and rather meager gains, from this war.

While Putin’s grip on power certainly seems firm, he has long been obsessed with “color revolutions,” popular uprisings in post-Soviet states that have deposed longstanding leaders. However unlikely the prospect of such an uprising in Russia, the downside risk to Putin would be severe. If he thinks so, the implications for the war’s outcome are considerable.

So what’s next for Putin? We don’t know. Beyond missile strikes and other attacks in Ukraine, he will no doubt continue Russia’s “hybrid war” tactics trying to unsettle European governments and populations. In a war with no clear outlet, might Putin be tempted to “test” NATO or escalate in some other fashion? Perhaps. There has certainly been increasing speculation on that front. If at the beginning of July one could say “war talk is swirling around Europe,” by the end of the month, after Ukraine destroyed an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, the talk was of “total war.”

However, it is imperative to note that were he to escalate, Putin would not be acting from a position of strength but rather from fear, or even a sense of desperation. If that is the case, how then should the West respond?

The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall simultaneously argues that Putin is “losing the war” and “desperate,” making Putin now at his “most dangerous,” but negotiations appear pointless since any ceasefire may simply allow Russia to “freeze the conflict while reorganizing and rearming.” He is not alone in arguing that Russia finds itself in a dire situation from its prolonged and costly war on a much smaller Ukraine, while also believing the country could revive itself and attack a much more powerful NATO in a few years. Simply stated, both cannot be true, and Russia’s threat to NATO appears greatly exaggerated.

Likewise, writing in the journal Foreign Policy, some think tankers agree that the war is at its “most dangerous,” but “pressure on the battlefield” will not bring Putin to negotiations, since inevitably “autocratic logic demands escalation.” Yet, while “Ukraine has to survive the escalation,” by circular reasoning they argue that the West needs to “widen the pressure” and “generate crises across multiple fronts” so that at some point negotiations become the only option. Yet they forget that unlike the examples they point to—Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan or Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iran-Iraq war—Russia is a nuclear superpower.

Indeed, the only response that most European leaders can find is greater military pressure. The continent is engaging in what has been called its greatest military buildup since the 1930s. This includes long-range missile systems designed “specifically to hit the Russian heartland” as well as plans to move nuclear-capable weapons systems to Russia’s borders, including in formerly neutral Finland. While European leaders rightly condemn Putin for speaking only the language of war, they themselves offer little else.

Europe needs to remember that deterrence is not the only—and not always the best—strategy for dealing with military confrontation. The alternative is to recall the logic of the “security dilemma,” the spiral of action and reaction on both sides that invites escalation, which some have called the “quintessential problem” of international relations. With that dynamic in place, the chances for miscalculation are high, for instance if an apparently errant Russian missile were to land in Poland, as one just did.