It's entirely possible. They have a history of this kind of activity going right back to the 1920's. Survivors of a regime that routinely pulled stunts like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_of_Trotskyist_Anti-Soviet...

wouldn't even regard it as an unusual tactic.

An 'does this benefit Russia in any way' filter on a lot of internet reporting/commenting/activity over the last couple of years can be fairly illuminating. What tends to trip them up is any historical references pre-WW2, which have to paper over some horrible cracks.