So lets try to sort this out a little. First and very important matter to understand is that by 2014, Russia had completely weaponized its media. To understand the power and extent of it, I will refer to earlier usage of this weapon that has been extensively studied - 2007 Estonian riots.

Events revolved around a statue. You probably knew this but lets take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of this.

Estonian capital had a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier in the middle of the city that was used as gathering ground for hard core Russia supporters around 9th May every year. The company was usually not large but because they consumed strong alcohol, it was noisy and disorderly and because many of them also waved red Soviet flags, it also attracted attention of Estonians who perceived this as demonstration of Russian supremacy and insult on their suffering because of the Russian occupation. Russian narrative of these gatherings was commemoration of the fallen soldiers who liberated Estonia. This did not help to bring two communities closer. When existence of the actual remains under the statue was confirmed, Estonian government decided to follow the Russian narrative and move the statue out of the city center to the cemetery and also rebury the remains there properly. If local Russians learned about this, small crowd, perhaps few dozen, game to protest against this relocation. This was the starting point to from where the weaponized Russian media kicked in.

The peaceful relocation of the statue to the cemetery and reburial of the remains was reframed as plan to destroy the statue and the remains. Then this was used as backdrop to the narrative that it is all done as an attack against Russians, their memory and all the things Russian. Suddenly this became the main focal point of all the Russia, like it was the most important thing in the world. It was constantly hammered in the media for weeks, members of the Russian parliament gave their opinions and the narrative was getting more and more hostile by every day and more and more detached from the reality. Of course it was framed as expression of Nazism. It was complete mass hysteria. And it worked. Estonian Russians, who were mostly under influence of the Russian media, bought this false narrative and gathered to protest in thousands.

The protests were violent, rocks were thrown at the police, which of course was not displayed in the Russian media, there it was a peaceful protest, but the situation was still mostly orderly and under police control. Until a complete hoax was used to spark disorderly riots that ended in city wide destruction of the private property. The statue was photoshopped out of the image, cut off from the legs, and it was then distributed in Russian media as proof that it had been destroyed. The footage of the police operation, that followed, was then displayed in the Russian media to portray it as Estonian government violent attack on the Russian population. More hoaxes were created like the claim that police officers murdered a Russian man on the street.

In the end the riots were dispersed with great effort, the statue was moved to the cemetery as planned, it was not destroyed of course and the remains were properly reburied.

In conclusion, Russian propaganda can create a complete fabrication of the reality and then use it as a weapon.