Oliver Stone - useful idiot and filmmaking rag of putin propaganda

As the russian troops failed to capture Kyiv and face huge military losses, the bigger efforts russians will dedicate to their propaganda machine. The whole world is still in shock by russian crimes and the world is united against putin, against the world. But the main message and attempt of russian propaganda is to try to show that there are different opinions, there are some particular “geopolitical” reasons which justify the genocide, and that the russian propaganda itself might be the “alternative” news. 

In this informational struggle which continues for years, russians use multiple factors, from the secret services networks, troll farms, propagandists on payroll, and of course - the useful idiots. 

Oliver Stone is definitely the useful idiot. A while back I watched his “​​Ukraine on Fire” as well as a long interview with Putin, and Putin’s main agent in Ukraine - Medvedchuk. For me, all of these videos look like cheap propaganda, but I acknowledge that it is high-quality propaganda first of all because Oliver Stone is a known name and he made some popular films before. I assume some people might be influenced by this propaganda, and I assume that the film director was not paid for doing this work and decided to become russian useful idiot. Why? Maybe because of the possibility to have warm conversations with “the richest man in the world”. It’s a fact that probably no other western journalist could spend so much time with Putin and Oliver Stone as it seems from the interview is really proud of that fact. 

So the recent interview Oliver Stone gave on Lex Fridman podcast really disappointed me. Oliver acted as a “devil’s advocate” repeating all the basic lines of Putin propaganda. I hope at least he would try to fabricate some “insider” information but he mentioned that he didn’t speak with Putin for 2 years. 

In March it went over the news that Oliver Stone condemned Putin's 'aggression' in Ukraine stating that Russia was wrong to invade its neighbor. But as it is clear now, Oliver Stone is repeating the russian cliches such as if Putin would not invade, Ukraine would attack Donbas, that US and its allies in NATO have been provoking Russia, that “Russian Ukrainians” were discriminated etc. etc. 

This article I wrote because Lex Fridman and his podcasts are famous in the cryptocurrency industry, as he invited many crypto-entepreneurs and visionaries such as Vitalik Buterin (who while being Russian by ethnicity condemned russian aggression from the beginning and donated a huge amount of money to support Ukraine). Lex Fridman had a podcast even with Elon Musk and other modern visionaries, so this time I’m a bit sad that he gave his time to russian propagandist. But all I can do is write short article, explaining why Oliver Stone has no credibility in my eyes and if it will be necessary, I can write a longer article explaining his lies and propaganda cliches spoken in this video or before in his previous propagandist works. 

First of all Oliver Stone has really no clue about Ukraine, and in the beginning, he even acknowledges it, saying that he doesn’t know much as has been to Ukraine 1 time in 1980 during the Soviet Union. Let’s check some particular examples.

He mentiones Victor Medvedchuk whom he called “Medvedev” (yes, like Dmitrii Medvedev, ex- president of russia). He interviewed Medvedchuk but still can’t remember his name or can’t see the difference between him and Medvedev. By the way - that particular interview is not even cheap propaganda, it’s a political advertisement. It was released just before the elections and it definitely helped to gain more results for Medvedchuk and his party. Such propaganda and advertisement is not cheap, the only thing we can ask is how much Oliver Stone was paid for it and like Manafort he might be asked if he payed taxes from this income. 

Then Oliver Stone continues to make his mistakes, saying that “Medved was very important figure in the administration of Kuchma, the first Ukrainian prime-minister in the 1990”. Then he continues his compliments to the Medvedchuk saying that “He did a great job on the economy. He was very thoughtful man”. Well, Leonid Kuchma was president (and not first) in 90s and if to be precise, Medvedchuk was the head of administration in 2002—2005. You can think these are the small mistakes, who cares about Ukrainian politics? I don’t expect foreigners to know all the details about Ukrainian politics, but if you don’t know something - why give false information. For me it’s a definitive sign, that Oliver Stone is not willing to go deep into the details, he doesn’t even want to hear the Ukrainian side, his task is simple - promote medvedchuk, putin, russia… 

Answering the question that Zelenskyy is fighting for the sovereignty of his nation, Oliver stone responds: “He thinks so. He could say that. He’s not acknowledging that the sovereignty of his nation was stolen in 2014 with a coup d’etat that brought this Right Sector into power”. Another stupid russian propaganda myth. In the parliamentary elections after Maidan, Right Sector had only 2 MPs (from 450) who won in single-mandate districts (moreover later they left Right Sector, and now for a long time Right Sector as a political party has no big influence). But back then, Right Sector was a scarecrow for brainwashed russians and for their satellites all over the world. No wonder Oliver Stone repeats these propaganda instructions, the only thing is that these instructions were from back in that time, and he probably didn’t update yet all of his newer instructions now. 

In these hard times of war, it’s hard to see people who are really neutral about the russian war against Ukraine. The vast majority of intellectuals support Ukraine, some as Oliver Stone - support russia. Don’t mistake his position for a neutral one - he is a small element of russian propaganda machine, he put his name and reputation to serve putin’s evil deeds.