Doing that before the election (I assume your plan, if you were Putin, is to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?) is more difficult than subverting the, very optimistically, 30 that will get elected.
If you know the candidates beforehand, you can bully them before the election, see who wins nevertheless, and bully those again.
> to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?
Having some of them withdraw is also useful, it's a numbers game.
Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree?
I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My original point was that announcing the Smart Voting lists in the last moment can be useful, I think gave some good reasons for it.
Smart voting does not create new popular candidates. It’s a way to concentrate the 5 % they can access (or 2 %, if badly mismanaged by publishing the list too late) in an efficient way.