I guess I don’t buy that.

Many non technical people use VPNs to access region restricted content. It is trivial to understand and use.

Assuming this all actually happened as described, it sounds like someone wanted it to appear that these attempts were coming from Russia.

And/or they just dgaf because they know they or anyone else involved won't ever be held accountable.

Occam’s razor would also suggest a hoax as one of several very credible possibilities.