And from the Kyiv Independent’s reporting, it sounds like they were asking anyone they could on background and getting completely contradictory answers from both the military and political side. But, I don’t believe the US would accept that they were firing him from some unknown in the Ukrainian government and I don’t think WaPo or Reuters would run stories based on nobodies (at least 2) in the US government.
So your theory that it could be a feint to bait Russia makes more sense to me than this being Russian propaganda.
If it’s not, you’d think they’d want to rip the band-aid off quickly to limit confusion though, given how widespread and pernicious Russian propaganda is.