Where does Navalny’s reported death leave Russia and Putin?

The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, as reported by authorities in Moscow on Friday, ushers in a new turning point for President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, underscoring both the Kremlin’s power and the potential for instability that continues to threaten it.

The announcement came just a month before Russia’s rubber-stamp presidential elections, when the Kremlin will look to portray Russians as united behind Mr. Putin and his bid for a fifth term. Analysts expect the Kremlin to try to couple his surefire electoral victory with fresh gains on the front in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been taking the initiative against a Ukrainian army struggling to maintain its Western support.

As the third year of the war nears, Mr. Putin’s control of domestic politics appears nearly total, with his most prominent surviving opponents either in jail or in exile. Street protests are immediately snuffed out, and thousands of Russians have been prosecuted for criticizing the war.

Offering high salaries to military recruits, the Kremlin has managed to wage its invasion without resorting to a second military draft, meaning that most Russians have been able to go on with their daily lives. The West’s far-reaching sanctions have not crippled Russia’s economy.

But to some analysts, the reports of Mr. Navalny’s death — which his aides said they feared were most likely true — are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s power may be more tenuous than meets the eye.

“Navalny tended to sense the vulnerable points, rather than creating them,” a Moscow political analyst, Mikhail Vinogradov, said in a phone interview on Friday, suggesting Mr. Putin had liabilities, like corruption, that provided an opening for an opportunistic opponent.Mr. Vinogradov described the day’s news as the most shocking death of a Russian politician in the country’s post-Soviet history.