 Russian nationalist Igor Gurkin fears being eliminated like Wagner's Prigodzin. Igor Gurkin, a pro-war Russian nationalist jailed for challenging President Vladimir Putin, is worried he will meet the same fate as Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigodzin, who died in a plane crash earlier this year after rebelling against the Russian leader according to Politico. My arrest happened a month after Prigodzin's rebellion. Gurkin told Russian media bazaar in an interview. The greatest fear is that instead of the usual criminal punishment, I will be amnestised. In the same way as the Cook, Gurkin added in a reference to Prigodzin, who was named Putin's chef after his proximity to the Russian leader allowed him to secure lucrative government catering contracts. Gurkin, former colonel from the Russian spy service who goes by the nom d'gur, Strelkov, is notorious for leading Russian paramilitary troops into Ukraine's Donbas region in 2014 and briefly becoming defence minister in the Donetsk People's Republic, a Russian puppet state. In 2022, he was convicted of murder in absentia for the downing of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014, which killed 298 people. After Donbas, Gurkin reinvented himself as an ultra-nationalist military commentator who repeatedly criticised Russia's tactics and strategy in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His withering critiques eventually landed him in a Russian jail in July this year, shortly after Prigodzin's aborted mutiny against the Kremlin, where he is still awaiting trial on charges of inciting extremism. Gurkin later announced he would defy Putin in 2024, Russian presidential elections, but a Moscow court extended his pre-trial detention by six months, effectively preventing him from running.