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© Reuters / Joshua Roberts
Russia has been scheming for decades to splinter the West with civilization-shattering fake news, claims a shocking three-part film series published by the New York Times. The series was filed under "op-ed" for a reason, however.

Russia's alleged "meddling" in the 2016 presidential election is the "culmination of Moscow's decades-long campaign to tear the West apart," according to the scary graphics-filled, spooky music-stuffed video series. The three-part report - safely labelled opinion/editorial - insists that America's internal political squabbles can be traced back to a "virus" conceived by "KGB spies"in the 1980s. Who knew that the Soviets had Twitter?

"Americans are using Russia's playbook against one another without the faintest clue," the NYT series warns. To back up their ironclad claims, the filmmakers interview a former Czechoslovak intelligence service officer, Ladislav Bittman, about all the terrible fake news that the KGB once spread - and purportedly continues to inspire. But how exactly did Bittman become privy to these juicy KGB scoops? The ex-spook never worked for the Soviet security service, and fled to the US in 1968. Just an opinion, basically.

RT's Murad Gazdiev takes a closer look at the sensational op-ed series - concluding that the evidence-free accusations might be an unfortunate case of psychological projection.