I do know what you mean, but I mostly follow Russian news, so it's hard to think of it as American propaganda. For me, anyway. Like, why would a Russian channel like Russia Today, officially funded by the Russian government, go to such trouble to broadcast American propaganda that shows that two guys accused of a poisoning in England are obviously lying when they say why they were there, when they say they aren't military intelligence agents...which, a few days later, they were exposed as being. CNN didn't participate in that at all, in effect, the Russian government broadcast it to millions of viewers. And it makes Russia look like it in fact, almost openly, does exactly the kind of thing the Metropolitan is talking about.
I'm not saying HH Patriarch Bartholomew should be afraid of this...just that to me, given what Russian sources show, it doesn't seem totally out of left-field.