That was in 2017. The elections were in 2018; a year later. Navalny had also been a thorn in Putin for 5 years by then.He did kill him month before, when he ordered him to be moved to that prison. He send him there to die.
This doesn't seem like a Putin play. We know what his MO is. He kills his opposition publicly to send a message. They don't die in prison a month before the election.
We're pretending that the west is not capable of orchestrating something like this despite the fact that people like Henry Kissinger and John Bolton existed precisely to do that
Not to mention the fact that the Germans and the EU just announced they are spending more in defense to stop Russian expansion. While obfuscating the fact that NATO has been expanding East for 25 years