I don't have to fool the entire rest of the world. They just need to fool enough of their own people, to sow doubt among the less well-informed, and give the thinnest veneer of plausibility to be useful idiots on the far right and far left in the West.

I'm going to point out again that despite the fact that Russia accidentally leaked the real results of the Crimean "referendum" a few days after it happened, after the start of the current invasion there were still a whole lot of people on this sub, people who seemed from their post histories to not be members of the 50 Ruble Army, who genuinely believed that the referendum was legitimate and we should respect it.