Putin out as President of Russia by December 31, 2026?

Putin remains the dominant political actor in Russia with control over the security services, the military high command, and the party/administrative apparatus, and the state has strong mechanisms for containing domestic dissent and neutralizing rivals; these structural advantages make an involuntary or voluntary exit before the end of 2026 inherently difficult. Market-implied probability (Yes = 12.5%) is low and consistent with the baseline view that the incumbency is robust, but market prices underweight low-probability, high-impact tail events such as a sudden successful assassination or a rapid elite split, which justifies a modest upward adjustment to the market price in my view. Historical patterns under Putin show that leadership transitions have typically been tightly managed and rare, but the 2022–2025 war context and the 2023 Wagner mutiny episode demonstrate that acute shocks to elite cohesion and sudden crises are possible, creating non-negligible pathways to removal despite institutional strength. Operationally, the most plausible removal mechanisms are sudden medical emergency or death, a narrowly executed assassination or kidnapping, or a rapid palace coup by elements of the security services; scenarios like mass protest-driven resignation are much less likely given repression but cannot be entirely dismissed if battlefield setbacks or economic collapse produce elite defections and fractured loyalty.