Plus people neglect the unifying factor of a foreign enemy even in a dictatorship.
I've experienced this personally as someone protesting Milošević regime back in 1996/97.
There is a reason why those protests happened between two wars, and continued only in 2000, after the Kosovo war.
Fear of dictatorship is only a part of it, the other is the unifying reaction to a foreign enemy.
Ousting Russian paraolympians from the games, or musicians from Eurovision, or banning Tchaikovsky from Berlin philharmonics are attacks on Russians in general.
Those will have a unifying anti-west reaction inside Russia.
We are heading towards a nuclear war, while everyone is sure the other side will back down.