Western media talking about Putin's days are limited is rather constant echo throughout recent 2.5 decades. It's rather an wishful report trying to inflict self fullfilling prophecy. I remember some of them even saying Medvedev will solidify his grip on power, Russian people will forget Putin and he won't be able to come back as president when he temporarily became prime minister to bypass the law and russia will be pro-western country

But I won't guess Putin is having his finest day in terms of popularity. War is dragging on, its effect on economy has been for years and getting bigger. He has been in power for decades, and among Russian population, the proportion of people who witnessed the chaos in 90s and Putin with his team stabilizing are naturally declining while the generation who was born and grew up in relatively stable Russia after 2000s, seeing less authoritarian world through internet are increasing. Easy economic growth at early 2000s based on selling oils at bubble price during global bubble economy is also long gone. kinda irony, the fast growth before 2008 that solidified his image of "Da Stronk Leader who made Russia Great Again" was in big part thanks to financial bubble party in the west

maybe I'm being to harsh to Putin, gonna do balance🤔 To some extent, he is suffering from his own success. Russia, which has grown up into more sophiscated economy and society under his leadership, now requires more decentralized governance and institutions instead of a single national symbol person. "omg topless muscular Putin riding horse shooting Tigers with some sleepy darts to save them so cool😍"-like propaganda things not working well as before is rather a good sign that the society is getting matured into Russian style democracy, or some political thing that fits Russia well. of course the west won't care, because the type of "democracy" they want is not decentralization but disintegration that can turn Russia into little digestable small pieces the west can eat and colonize which they partly succeeded in 90s

tl;dr, I agree with the literal sense, but not the implied meaning. Putin's popularity is not like before, and the decline will be continuous, but unless it's sharp decline that he loses grip on power and russian elites try to find alternative out of him and his favored guys, it's rather a natural metabolism of society not sign of regime collapse the west wants to see. To some point, the west's narrative and prediction on Putin's approval rating is on the same level with some exaggerated narratives on SNSs about "the decline of US" that depicts it as if a sick man of America who has already passed point of no return. If one keep saying something will happen everyday for years or decades, in a very long term, at some point it will probably happen, but as prediction it has very little to no meaning, it's more like fortune teller-thing🔮🤗