I don't have any insight into this situation, but I feel like the incentives to blame Russia for any problem must be tremendous.

It's a perfect 'get out of jail free' card for any sufficiently complicated screw up.

This is where my mind goes too. They're not even outright blaming Russia here either, just planting the seed by referring to intelligence assessments that are for some reason made public. I hesitate to use the term because of the connotations, but considering the ever-increasing ease by which such cyberattacks can be conducted and the actors' identity obscured, this and similar incidents seem ripe for some kind of a false flag type deal. Some non-zero number of these incidents have to be exactly that.

This isn't to excuse Russia's abhorrent conduct elsewhere either, I'm just not entirely convinced by the boogeyman lazy journalists seem perfectly content to keep trotting out.