Taking it further, the entire narrative that "everyone in the world except for Europe and the US are savage barbarians" is wearing very thin.

In 1797, Polish general Micheal Sokolnicki presented to the French foreign ministry a fake testament of Peter the Great, which was aimed to convince the French that the fate of Poland and Europe were inseparable. The forged testament has become a central component of anti-Russian propaganda as it builds on the stereotype of an Asiatic and barbaric Russia seeking to entangle Europe in enduring chaos and division to conquer the continent. This implies that Europe must unify as an in-group to ward off the Eastern hordes.

Diesen explains how this fake testament has been used ever since to justify making war on Russia: Napoleon in 1812; the French-British invasion of Crimea in 1853-6; Adolf Hitler during the Second World War; President Harry Truman after WWII.

After the Cold War, the narrative of Russia’s aim to sow divisions within the West was at the centre of the initiative of constructing a new Europe without Russia and continuing the containment policy. Even as the international distribution of power has changed fundamentally against Russia, the enduring inference is that a Russian conquest of Europe would ensue in the absence of European and trans-Atlantic unity.

This is apparently covered in greater detail in his recent book, Russiaphobia: Propaganda in International Politics. Someone replying to Glenn's tweet describes it as "200+ years of russigate."