Prigozhin's dead, but is Putin's authority strengthened after plane crash?

Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny and subsequent survival presented the most serious challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin's two decades of iron rule.

So while Prigozhin's fiery death in a plane crash should have strengthened Putin's position ahead of an election in March, experts have warned he could still face dissent from other ultranationalist, elitist factions angry at military failures in Ukraine.

“I think in the short term, it clamps down on any kind of ultranationalist unrest,” said Sam Ramani, an expert in international relations at the University of Oxford in Britain. “Looking ahead though, there’s no certainty that ultranationalist dissent won’t mobilize again, particularly as the elections come in March 2024.”

The Kremlin has denied it was behind the crash, rejecting widespread speculation that it was a revenge assassination for Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny in late June, when Wagner fighters captured the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don before marching on Moscow.