MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. Veteran Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, who made a video calling on the Americans to defend themselves from Russia, was actually set up, while those behind this escapade will soon be revealed, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook on Friday.

"Morgan Freeman has been roped in, just like Colin Powell [he served as US Secretary of State in 2001-2005 - TASS] was," she noted. "I believe this is another story about the end justifying the means. However, we will know who is behind this story sooner than we knew about the true contents of the infamous test tube [on February 5, 2003, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, Colin Powell demonstrated a test tube containing some white powder, claiming that it was a sample of the chemical weapons developed in Iraq, which, in the US state secretary’s view, explained the need for a military operation against Baghdad. Eventually, no trace of chemical weapons was found in the country - TASS].

At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman added that it was not the first time when the "Russian threat" myth was being used by some forces to achieve their goals.

"Recently it became known that the Obama administration had been wiretapping Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort based on a secret court decision," Zakharova noted. "The wiretapping activities continued after the election. Do you understand what Russia has to do with it? Right, the goal is to legitimize the post-election lawlessness," she wrote.

The Russian diplomat also said that "without an external factor, it would become a new Watergate, while with the hype over ‘foreign interference’, the story gained a national security aspect."