As convoluted as that sounds, it is actually more credible.
I know. It stuck in my croup that some bloke in a Czech prison somehow gets this narrative out to the known universe. How? He had to have help. It’s not like he’s just going to scrawl this out on paper, flag down a guard and get it into the New York times for the morning edition. So who’s the help? Us? The Russians? Far more believable to me that there’s something back-channel going on between him and Moscow.