The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia.
It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
How does some chump who gets paid to stick potatoes into tailpipes* become a double agent? Being a double agent requires the ability to hurt the side you're ostensibly working for. The potato guy can show Telegram chats where a guy called Alexey, or maybe an entirely non-Russian name, gave him a job.
* That actually happened. It was a false flag operation to discredit the Greens (party).
I'm not saying such claims are not being published, I'm saying they're likely false because they make about as much sense as a country blowing up its own pipeline. Espionage outside of war is an extremely sensitive issue, and were any country trivially baitable, they'd end up getting played hard. Not only would it eliminate deniability, but you also open up the door to major counter-intel operations and getting more insight into the operations, potentially on a massive scale, of an adversary.
I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.
This has been extremely well documented. They are just paying some losers a few hundred euros to throw a molotow cocktail somewhere, that's it. As for the Germans, you know that they investigated the NS incident and are prosecuting the Ukrainian perpetrators. Now when the perpetrators are Russian, everything is fake of course.
Russia blowing up its own pipeline was also 'extremely well documented.' One of the many reasons that propaganda is self defeating is because when done effectively, as it has been with Ukraine, the people doing it eventually begin to be unable to tell what people really think due to self censorship and other issues. Have you really convinced everybody, or just made them smile and nod?
Germany is now finding out the answer to that question, and I expect it's mere foreshadowing for much of the rest of Europe. The exact same happened with the Soviet Union. Gorbachev grew up during the Stalin years, alongside all of the joys that entails. He smiled and nodded all the way until he was at the top in power, at which point he almost immediately set about undermining the systems that had been in place.
No, Russia being behind NS was never extremely well documented. There was lots of speculation and the German police did investigate and came to the conclusion that it had been the Ukrainians. Now the German police did investigate and came to the conclusion that it was the Russians. That's it.
By this standard, nothing is well documented. The Western propaganda machine was building up an extensive case against Russia. I suspect the reason it was dialed back was only because they overestimated the gullibility of the public - nobody believed them.
Operation Mockingbird. [1] Now let's bring that into modern times with the internet, digital communications, the complete degradation of values from government and business alike, and LLMs on top of it all now. It's why nothing makes any sense. Because it's just lies force fed on people alongside actions to encourage self censorship.
It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.