Oh, yeah, I'm mostly thinking in the military/police apparatus and in the right wing political sphere. Goals would be more along the lines of complete sabotage than intelligence acquisition; Russian goals right now seem to be to cause the US to implode, leaving Russia and China as the only world superpowers while America Balkanizes and devolves into in-fighting. Literally the 50s-60s NATO Cold War strategy, but flipped around to target the US.
And yeah, you increase the surface area and someone's going to end up evaporating off and blowing the whole op. My feeling was that these people are not working together, or even towards the same goals necessarily, probably with totally disconnected handlers, most of whom don't necessarily work for the Russian state per se (oligarchs, etc). The risks remain, but the damage someone flaking can cause is greatly reduced.
But I trust your judgement on the matter more than my own, and if you say it seems like an American problem, I can accept that.