>I think the same every time I read this, but at one point it has to give, right?

If you repeat this same news every time, then you'll eventually be right, yes.

Anecdotally, the people I know who recently visited Moscow and St Petersburg claim they're not seeing significant struggle, and definitely not the 'risk your life for violent revolution' type of issues.

I don't think so. An oligarchy can hold on for generations, look at North Korea.

The Soviet Union, which was much worse, went on for a very long time. But it fell under similar circumstances, essentially bankrupted by a war in Afghanistan.

It's not so much when the population feels it, rather the elites who prop Putin up.

I agree with you that war can easily become unpopular and turn people against their government. But is there any country, whose economy has been sanctioned by the foreigners and crippled by it, where the people then decided to overthrow their government? As far as I know my history, no. Foreign sanctions easily give every country an easy excuse to blame all economic problems on the foreigners. In every instance, they've actually united nations against their "common" enemy (i.e. the foreign sanctioner). They also provide an excuse to stifle criticism using state powers as any criticism on the government handling of the economy can be conveniently labelled as speaking the language of the "enemy" and / or supporting the "enemy".

While I understand that the true purpose of sanctions is to weaken a country's military, sometimes I do wonder if it is a war crime as it also ends up effectively "punishing the people".