Within the video above, Lex Fridman interviews Oliver Stone concerning the Russia-Ukraine battle. Stone, an award-winning movie director, was the manager producer of “Ukraine on Hearth,”1,2 a documentary that got here out in 2016.
Stone additionally interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin between 2014 and 2016. The interviews turned the documentary sequence, “The Putin Interviews,” which aired in 2017. So, Stone has some perception into each nations. Fridman, in the meantime, is half-Russian, half-Ukrainian.
Ukraine on Hearth
“Ukraine on Hearth” centered on the Maidan Revolution3 that started in Kiev in 2013. After three months of peaceable protests in opposition to the Ukrainian authorities’s determination to not signal a complete free commerce settlement with the EU, favoring a suggestion from Russia as a substitute, lethal violence broke out.
Petro Poroshenko was elected president in a particular election in Could 2014. In accordance with the official story, Ukrainians had been dissatisfied with president Viktor Yanukovych’s “rising authoritarianism,” and his refusal to signal the EU affiliation settlement, so that they overthrew him.
Yanukovych and different high-level officers, nonetheless, declare the violent revolution was orchestrated by the U.S. for the aim of regime change. Leaked conversations revealed top-level officers discussing how one can implement a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected authorities.
You’ll be able to learn extra about this and see the movie in my earlier article, “Ukraine on Fire: 2016 Documentary by Oliver Stone.” The present president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comic and actor, was voted in in April 2019.
Putin, the Chief and the Man
On this interview, Fridman and Stone primarily give attention to Putin — how and what he thinks, primarily based on Stone’s notion of the person — and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Stone presents a unique facet of Putin that many People in all probability have by no means seen, and explains why Putin’s conduct is, maybe surprisingly, rational.
The U.S. has an extended historical past of anti-Soviet bias. As famous by Stone, the American stance was that capitalism works and communism doesn’t. Trendy Russia is not communist,4,5,6 but the U.S. antagonism in opposition to Russia stays, whereas the U.S. authorities, paradoxically, is now doing every part in its energy, and past, to implement communism right here.
Stone notes that Putin is “very a lot a market man,” and has been very clear that he believes nationwide sovereignty is paramount for world peace and harmonious relations. Putin insists that each one nations should be sovereign, “and I imagine the US has by no means accepted that,” Stone says. The U.S., Stone believes, is much extra taken with protecting nations subservient to it and its ideologies.
In accordance with Stone, Putin has a usually good status in different nations for being a person who promotes the pursuits of his nation, however not on the expense of others. Preserving the world in concord, “this has all the time been in his image,” Stone insists.
When requested if he thought energy had a corrupting affect on Putin, Stone insists that Putin would by no means final if he had been appearing as a dictator. The Russian individuals wouldn’t preserve him able of energy — which he has saved, on and off, for about 20 years.
Russia is a functioning democracy, and the individuals’s displeasure would reveal itself in a number of alternative ways. The poll field is just one avenue by which they exhibit their dissatisfaction. However, apparently, they assume Putin’s doing job at defending the nation and searching for its wants.
Fridman, alternatively, notes he senses a mix of concern and apathy towards the management when he speaks to Russian household and mates, and this considerations him. Stone counters Fridman’s considerations saying he noticed “much more freedom within the (Russian) press than what’s pictured within the West, and which means completely different factors of view. Russians are all the time arguing amongst themselves. I’ve by no means seen a extra contentious nation.”
Stone’s Expertise With Putin
A part of Putin’s political longevity could have one thing to do together with his potential to remain unruffled. “I by no means noticed him lose his mood,” Stone says, noting that whereas most People are typically emotional, Putin, in distinction, is calm, rational, balanced, mature and respectful, even underneath strain. And, opposite to charismatic dictators similar to former Venezuelan chief Hugo Chavez, Putin doesn’t attempt to appeal you. He’s a straight-shooter.
All of his interviews with Stone had been granted with out guidelines or restrictions. All questions had been allowable. Nothing was off the desk. Putin additionally didn’t request to see any of the work earlier than it was revealed. “He trusted me,” Stone says.
In accordance with Stone, Putin has “no empire intentions,” and repeatedly expressed his need to have pleasant relations with the U.S. Sadly, Putin’s status has been tarnished by U.S. media, individuals appearing from a political agenda, those that by no means met him, by no means went to Russia and don’t know Russian historical past. This U.S.-fabricated persona of Putin as an enemy of each his personal individuals and the remainder of the world has made such relations troublesome.
Stone’s Preliminary Tackle Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Stone had a harsher critique in opposition to Putin in a March 2022 Fb put up, during which he had the next to say about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:7
“Though the US has many wars of aggression on its conscience, it doesn’t justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. A dozen wrongs don’t make a proper. Russia was mistaken to invade. It has made too many errors:
1) underestimating Ukrainian resistance
2) overestimating the army’s potential to attain its goal
3) underestimating Europe’s response, particularly Germany upping its army contribution to NATO, which they’ve resisted for some 20 years; even Switzerland has joined the trigger. Russia will probably be extra remoted than ever from the West
4) underestimating the improved energy of NATO, which is able to now put extra strain on Russia’s borders
5) in all probability placing Ukraine into NATO
6) underestimating the harm to its personal economic system and definitely creating extra inside resistance in Russia
7) creating a serious readjustment of energy in its oligarch class
8) placing cluster and vacuum bombs into play
9) and underestimating the ability of social media worldwide
However we should surprise, how may Putin have saved the Russian-speaking individuals of Donetsk and Luhansk?
Little doubt his Authorities may’ve performed a greater job of exhibiting the world the eight years of struggling of these individuals and their refugees — in addition to highlighting the Ukrainian buildup of 110,000 troopers on the Donetsk-Luhansk borders, which was occurring basically earlier than the Russian buildup. However the West has far stronger public relations than the Russians.
Or maybe Putin ought to’ve surrendered the 2 holdout provinces and supplied 1-3 million individuals assist to relocate in Russia. The world may’ve understood higher the aggression of the Ukrainian Authorities. However then once more, I’m undecided.
However now, it’s too late. Putin has allowed himself to be baited and fallen into the lure set by the U.S. and has dedicated his army, empowering the worst conclusions the West could make. He in all probability, I believe, has given up on the West, and this brings us nearer than ever to a Remaining Confrontation. There appears to be no street again.
The one ones joyful about this are Russian nationalists and the legion of Russian haters, who lastly obtained what they’ve been dreaming of for years, i.e. Biden, Pentagon, CIA, EU, NATO, mainstream media — and don’t overlook Nuland and her sinister neocon gang in D.C. This can considerably vindicate the uber hawks in public eyes.
Stating the toxicity of their insurance policies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, NATO enlargement, breaking nuclear treaties, censoring and omitting essential info from the information, and so on.) will probably be subsequent to not possible. Stating Western double requirements, together with Kyiv and Zelenskyy’s unhealthy conduct, will likewise fall on deaf ears as we once more draw the mistaken conclusions.
It’s simpler now to smear these of us who tried to know the Russian place by means of these final twenty years. We tried. However now’s the time, as JFK and Khrushchev confronted down the perilous scenario in Cuba in October 1962, for the 2 nuclear powers to stroll this again from the abyss. Each side want to avoid wasting face.
This isn’t a second for the U.S. to brag. As a Vietnam Struggle veteran and as a person who’s witnessed the limitless antagonism of the Chilly Struggle, demonizing and humiliating overseas leaders shouldn’t be a coverage that may succeed. It solely makes the scenario worse. Again-channel negotiations are crucial, as a result of no matter occurs within the subsequent few days or even weeks, the specter of a closing struggle should be realistically accepted and brokered.
Who can try this? Are there actual statesmen amongst us? Maybe, I pray, Macron. Carry us the likes of Metternich, Talleyrand, Averell Harriman, George Shultz, James Baker, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The nice unseen tragedy on the coronary heart of this historical past of our occasions is the lack of a real peaceable partnership between Russia and the U.S. — with, sure, doubtlessly China, no purpose why not besides America’s need for dominance.
The idiots who saved frightening Russia after the Chilly Struggle resulted in 1991 have dedicated a horrible crime in opposition to humanity and the longer term. Collectively, our nations may’ve been pure allies within the greatest battle of all in opposition to local weather change.
In its technical achievements alone, in massive scale science, in its rocketry, heavy industries, and its most fashionable, clear nuclear power reactors, Russia has been an ideal pal to man. Alas, in our century to date, man has did not see or attain for the celebrities.”
How Does He See It Now?
Now, two months later, how does he really feel concerning the scenario? “It’s very arduous to be trustworthy about this as a result of the West has introduced down a curtain. Anybody who questions the invasion of Ukraine and its penalties is an enemy of the individuals,” Stone replies. “I’ve by no means in my lifetime seen such a WALL of propaganda as I’ve seen within the West.”
And, the way in which European nations are leaping in with NATO suggests they don’t, in truth, have sovereignty over their very own nations, Stone says. Why hasn’t NATO objected to the massacres happening within the Donbas area of Ukraine ever since 2014, when Ukraine underneath Poroshenko took an anti-Russian place as an ally of the US?
There have been loss of life squads, native management had been being murdered, as had been journalists. An estimated 14,000 Ukrainian Russians had been killed between 2014 and early 2022 by the Ukrainian army and Nazi battalions,8 and the U.S. has supported it, and continues to take action.
Stone claims the logs of the Group for Safety and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Particular Monitoring Mission in Ukraine present that earlier than Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine, February 24, 2022, there was heavy artillery coming into the Donbas from the Ukrainian facet. In accordance with Russia’s International Ministry, Moscow’s motion in opposition to Ukraine was a “particular army operation” to finish the “systematic extermination of the Donbas inhabitants.”
Ukrainian forces had constructed up on the border, and Stone believes Ukraine was really planning to invade Donbas. Russia then responded by sending forces to the border, however this buildup on each side has been largely ignored by Western media, which portrayed it as a sudden and unprovoked invasion by Russia.
In different phrases, we can’t analyze the Russian invasion of Ukraine with out taking the Donbas battle, which has been ongoing since 2014, under consideration. Stone is satisfied that Poroshenko was instructed, from the beginning of his presidency, to refuse negotiations with Russia, and to keep up a hostile stance.
“That is very, very harmful,” Stone says. Zelensky, additionally, has maintained this stance since 2019. “The entire world is being harm by this, and nobody is asking it out.”
Stone believes Putin realized that the U.S. is intent on regime change in Russia, and are prepared to destroy Ukraine to do it. So, he took motion. Fridman suggests the Ukraine battle could in actuality be a proxy struggle between Russia and the U.S., and Stone appears to agree with this concept. However that also doesn’t give us any larger perception into this struggle. Putin may have surrendered the Donbas and supplied protected harbor for the refugees. He selected to not, however why we don’t know.
Regardless of the purpose, Stone is satisfied that it was a calculated transfer — and never one primarily based on the misuse of energy. He additionally factors out that Zelensky had talked about bringing in nuclear weapons into Ukraine shortly earlier than Russia’s invasion, which may have set off alarms and influenced Putin’s selections.
Stone additionally warns that the U.S. is greater than able to a nuclear and/or chemical false flag. A small nuclear system may very well be set off within the Donbas, and even when it didn’t make sense, the propaganda machine would routinely blame it on Russia. After all, Russia additionally has a major nuclear arsenal, which may very well be dropped at the fore.
“Can we stroll again from the brink of nuclear struggle?” Fridman asks. “Sure,” Stone replies. “What do we have to stroll it again?” Stone replies:
“Cause. Cause, after which diplomacy. Speak to the man. Mr. Biden, why don’t you settle down and go discuss to Mr. Putin in Moscow. And attempt to have a dialogue with out falling into ideologies.”
