Interest in Chernobyl has skyrocketed since the airing of the surprise hit HBO miniseries about the infamous nuclear disaster. (Reuters reports a “a 40% rise in [tour] trip bookings since the series.” But not everyone is happy about the increase in attention. The Moscow Times reports that general reaction to the series in Russia has been heavily negative, with some in the media claiming it was designed “to tarnish this country’s image as a nuclear power” and that the show presents “a caricature and not the truth.”

To counteract that “caricature,” one Russian TV station is prepping a response: Its own Chernobyl series with a somewhat different account of what went wrong. On NTV’s version, it will be revealed that “the CIA sent an agent to the Chernobyl zone to carry out acts of sabotage.”

More, from The Moscow Times:

As justification for the story, the film’s director, Alexei Muradov, cited fringe conspiracy theorists: ‘One theory holds that Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station.’

Meanwhile, Chernobyl remains the top-rated TV series in history on IMDb. So maybe they don’t have a lot of Russian users?

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