June 2, 2017–Vladimir Putin has played another card in the Russia Caper. As foreseen here (“How Many Cards Has Putin?” May 12, 2017), the Moscow leader has the ability to keep the pot boiling in America by letting out information from his own side on the cyber-political action against America’s 2016 election. It’s “Miss Scarlett, in the Conservatory, with the Lead Pipe”-type stuff.

Putin’s latest is that, perhaps, Russians did interfere in the U.S. elections, but that they would have been private citizens, “artists,” who got up in the morning, saw something happening, and wanted to play a part. Nothing governmental, nothing real–and he has some inmates in the FSB’s Lubyanka whom he can, in due course, trot out to put pretend substance on these assertions.

There’s been lots of talk, here and elsewhere, about whether the Russia Caper was real or not, perhaps just fevered figments of imagination. Lots of attention has gone into various American figures, inside the Trump White House and out. Some very esteemed colleagues think the charges are all hokum. But consider this, yet one more layer in this cake– the antics of Russian leader Putin and his government.

Putin has behaved all along as someone who does have a stake in play. All through 2016 Moscow’s line, like Trump’s, was there’s no there there. Mind you, cyberwar has daily been becoming a subject of more intensive global cooperation, with Washington and Moscow on the same side. But on this? No soda. The FSB’s arrests came at the end of the operational cycle, with the election done and the Trump transition underway. Putin said nothing at the time except deny his nation had had any role, and gracefully forego retaliation in late December when the U.S. government imposed certain sanctions on Russia. When the activities of Russian officials came into question–for example, with questions regarding President Trump’s leak of sensitive intelligence at a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Putin offered to provide the Russian meeting record to document what was said. Not said, by Putin, is anything about the reported requests by certain Trump operatives for a communications backchannel using Russian devices, from them to Putin. There has been no comment, either, on the hacking of American political entities by adversaries traced to Russian intelligence agencies. In each of these cases of action or inaction, the path Putin has followed corresponds to how a conspirator might proceed.

To Miss Scarlett in the Conservatory let’s propose an alternative– it was Ambassador Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.

It is time that those who wish to dismiss the reality of a Russian Caper be required to account for the Russian side of the hill, and advance explanations that would demonstrate the innocence of Putin and his minions in this affair.