Not long before Navalny's death, I read something about the apparent fact that he is a traditional Nazi supporter (per Ukraine) and that the Russians had caught him in the act of collaborating with the U.S. to prepare/conduct a Maidan revolution in Russia. This would seem to suggest the death is a pre-emptive strike at cementing his good reputation; more useful as a hallowed martyr than as a confirmed foreign agent and Nazi sympathizer. "In order to save his reputation, we had to kill him." Not incredible, in my view.