When Russian prison authorities announced the death of Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin's strongest political opponent, the Russian president appeared to beam with jubilation.
As he addressed a group of workers and students at a machine plant in the Russian industrial city of Chelyabinsk on Friday, a smiling Putin surprisingly made no mention of Navalny's death in a far-off Arctic prison, instead expressing satisfaction at the technological progress he is making had just seen.
“Forward! Success! To new frontiers!” Putin declared to a young worker who had expressed her admiration for the president.
With Navalny's death at age 47, further military aid to Ukraine still blocked in Congress, and the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the battlefield, much seems to be moving in Putin's favor, a month before Russia's presidential election, which he will definitely win.
Before the trip to Chelyabinsk, Putin had already been excited by a fawning interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week. Even the sanctions imposed by “our quasi-partners,” Putin boasted on Friday, had led to a surge in orders for the factory he visited.
Putin is now “outside any competition,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based senior researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Navalny’s death doesn’t just remove a major – albeit distant – political thorn. It's also another development that has caught the attention of Putin's potential critics.
Last summer, the rapid and demonstrative shooting down of a jet carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary commander who led a mutiny against the Russian military leadership, sent a chilling signal to all opponents of the Kremlin's current course.
And earlier this month, Russian electoral authorities quickly barred a liberal anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, from the presidential election, citing irregularities in the signatures required to run. Nadezhdin had little chance of victory, but the Kremlin does not tolerate the slightest signs of dissent.
“Putin is left alone now,” Kolesnikov said. “He is Solus Rex, the Lonely King. No one can stop him from triumphing.”
Some still warned that Putin might go too far. They pointed to Navalny's standing among some members of the Russian elite and the possibility that he will be viewed as a martyr, as well as the danger that the West could harden its resolve against Putin's regime – and perhaps even increase aid to Ukraine.
Navalny had called for a nationwide protest on the day of the presidential election in March and a gathering of voters at the polls at midday as a sign of opposition to Putin.
Analysts and opposition politicians said it was not clear how many responded to Navalny's call amid fears about Putin's increasingly repressive regime. However, they said it was possible that authorities did not want to leave anything to chance.
The Moscow authorities are “now very sensitive to all the details,” Kolesnikov added.
Moscow's muted display of mourning for Navalny, with few daring to challenge authorities by leaving flowers, was a sign of Russia's transformation since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Thousands took to the streets of Moscow to protest Navalny's arrest upon his return to Russia in January 2021. Some observers compared the events to the protests in Minsk in August 2020 that threatened to topple the Belarusian president.
But all protesters in Moscow today face “an enormous mass of armed people,” said Gennady Gudkov, a senior Russian opposition politician currently in exile in Paris.
“Street protests can only work if millions take to the streets,” said Gudkow. “But because people are not organized and have no resources, no newspapers, no political leaders, no parties or unions, there is nothing.”
Others said the death in prison of such a prominent and admired political figure could still pose major problems for Putin.
Navalny's “unmatched recognition, importance to elites and involvement in domestic politics distinguished him from all other opposition figures,” Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politics, a Russian political consulting firm based in France, posted on X. “This creates significant meaning “It's a political problem for the regime – it will have to deal with Navalny's legacy,” she said, adding that she expects “a significant wave of repression against Navalny.”
And in Moscow, some Russian business leaders watched nervously as progress in winning over part of the U.S. Republican Party to Russia's side could be undone by death.
Already on Friday, GOP members began denouncing members of the party who had recently sided with Putin, while President Biden railed against Republicans for blocking passage of a bill that would provide billions in aid to Ukraine.
“Putin doesn’t need this now,” said a Moscow businessman who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “It will be very difficult for the Republican Party to object now.”