MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. The US Department of State plans to post videos on social media in order to demonstrate "the severity of the Russian threat," Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said in a statement.
"Numerous facts indicate that the US State Department, consumed by unbridled anti-Russian hysteria, has ultimately transformed into an unprincipled propaganda mouthpiece," the statement reads.
"There are plans, backed by the American foreign office, to publish a number of short films in popular social networks and messengers in the near future in order to demonstrate 'the severity of the Russian threat.' The target audience of this project is the population of Sweden and Finland into whose heads the Americans need to din 'the universal fear' of Moscow's 'territorial appetite' trumped up by Washington," the SVR pointed out.
"High-ranking politicians of the two North European countries are actively involved in such creative work of the USA. They, like diligent students, smoothly repeat Russophobic mantras of the American bosses. The Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces Micael Byden is trying to convince the Swedes that Russia 'has put an eye on' the island of Gotland which is a 'key to establishing control over the Baltic Sea.' Relatively recently elected President of Finland A. Stubb has suddenly realized the 'existential threat from Russia' and, without hesitation, calls for 'paving the way to peace through the battlefield,'" the statement points out.
"The very propagandistic brainchild of the State Department will be presented as a 'heartfelt impulse' of a team of independent experts and journalists seeking 'for free' (i.e. at a bargain price) 'to open the eyes of the wider Western public drowning in Russian disinformation.' Washington is clearly counting on a panic among the residents of Sweden and Finland, as it was in the times of 'McCarthyism' in the USA. In this context, we can only wait for the "decent" politicians from former pseudo-neutral countries to start throwing themselves out of the windows shouting 'The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! They are everywhere!,' as US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal did in 1949," the SVR went on to say.
"In general, the SVR notes the State Department's escalating efforts to set all the international community against Russia, without even hesitating to publicly expose themselves as a laughing-stock in this process. The methods of influence used by the United States are so clumsy that they are visible with the unaided eye. They are caused by the inability of the USA, sticking to their myths about Russophobic fears, to perceive the existing reality without prejudice," Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service concluded.