>On the one hand they are a bunch of marginal looney
>tunes and on the other they are unwhitting pawns in a
>greater foreign and U.S conspiracy. Amazing!
I have no dog in this fight but you're just being silly if you can't acknowledge that the US uses anything - no matter how outlandish - to advance what it misapprehends as its interests. Here it wants to make Russia look bad. Full stop. So they inflate a bunch of groups with extremely limited constituency in Russia with well-founded hopes that Westerners won't bother to realize that it's more indifference to these groups rather than active repression that keeps them marginal.
I refer you to the career of Douglas Feith, Colin Powell's straight-faced presentation of a scale-model airplane as a biochem weapons delivery system, the cynical championing of Chalabi and the episodic reappearance of Manucher Ghorbanifar. If the US is willing to perpetrate frauds such as these against its own people why on earth would you think they wouldn't try something far more egregious elsewhere in the world (indeed, one should marvel at their restraint WRT Russia).
What strikes me as most amazing (your word) is the casual dismissal of overwhelming Russian support for Putinism. I guess they're all dupes, too.
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