And people in the US aren't really filled with "angst concerning their ongoing loss of hegemonic power and the fact the Russians dare to act for their own national interests"
The people of course are not the elites, by simple definition, for elites are the elite minority who rule over the majority of the people, the hoi polloi, as it has always been. It is the business of the elites to be concerned about the hegemonic power they wield and the rise of geopolitical competitors to that unchallenged power. The hoi polloi need only be concerned with whatever the elites need them to be concerned about, such as external enemies for example, and what better to bring the herd in than a Siberian wolf in sheeps clothing?
And yes, the US elites led by their insane Neoconservatives are currently in a blind panic due to the fact that the US war machine has suffered a major geopolitical defeat in Syria at the hands of the Russian political, diplomatic and military elites. The US regime change war against the secular, democratically elected and UN recognised government of Syria has been defeated, Obama's "Assad must go!" edict is now an empty threat backed up by technically criminal but tactically and strategically useless violence such as the Tomahawk missile strike.
To make matters worse, the Russian Federation has defeated the US regime change war by the technically legal use of force aiding the lawful government of Syria. Everything the US does in Syria however, from training and arming Sunni jihadist rebel forces who kill Syrian civilians, police and army, to actually bombing the Syrian Army at Deir Ezzor, is technically illegal. The US war machine in Syria is an openly criminal enterprise. US wars since 911 have all been technically criminal. The hoi polloi's applause for Trump's big bombs and useless missiles is applause for vicious criminality and everyone on the planet can see this now quite plainly.
Thus US hegemony is failing, its executive via its corporate media spreads increasingly outlandish falsehoods and glorifies criminal acts of violence for the sole benefit of the US domestic audience while vilifying imaginary external enemies, Putlers one and all. But it's the US that has been careering around the globe threatening violence, destroying societies and slaughtering many hundreds of thousands of mostly women, children and the elderly for the last 15 years of the GWOT. And with the collapse of hegemony that truth is finally now becoming utterable. The emperor really does have no clothes, all s/he has is a large bloodied knife like a common murderer.
And its that fact that is causing such angst amongst the US elites, for if they can't control the exceptional narrative they risk losing all control of the hoi polloi from whom they derive their power in the first place. So what better than a bedtime story for y'all, about nasty Russkies and evil Trumps, and make sure to check for reds under that bed! Cos where there's fire there's surely smoke, even without evidence, along with a sucker born every minute.