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First off was Russian President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who is reported to have said this

This is not a theme for us. It's nonsense. We do not want to have anything to do with this nonsense. This is utter nonsense. It is not something to either confirm or deny.

The more cogent comment was however made by the Russian Foreign Ministry's redoubtable spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in an interview with the Kommersant FM radio station

It is part of the campaign which began before the US presidential election and has been going on since then. This is another attempt to exert pressure on the new US administration and make deals related to various political appointments and lobbying.

We can't even say now that the media are biased because they are openly fulfilling a political order. The article mentions no evidence, it is based on information received from some sources. Actually, there is a typical pattern concerning the way that such articles come out and the response that they get (bold italics added)

In saying that this is an attempt to put pressure on the new administration Zakharova is absolutely right. However - as she surely knows - the purpose is not "to make deals related to various political appointments and lobbying". It is the much more sinister purpose of discrediting Donald Trump personally and of pressuring him into ending his attempts to forge a better relationship with Russia.

[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

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