YouSaid · the spoken record

Oliver Stone

lines on the record: 130
first: 2022-05-17
most recent: 2022-05-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“How far do you go in supporting them? Can Russia at this point say, well, we can't help you? You have to get along. You have to somehow be absorbed by the Kiev. You're going to be absorbed by them and they're not going to give you autonomy and you have to live with them. And there's going to be a price to pay. You could do that and you can also say, well, we open our borders to Don't Bask. You can come into our country. You can leave and we will help you to resettle.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As to what Putin was thinking at the time, I wondered this, and I still do. I said, okay, so Putin can say, let's say the Ukrainian government wants to now invade Donbass. This is on February 23, and they have artillery that are peppery in the whole place. They're going to go in and they're going to get Donbass back. What do you do? You have Russian separatists who are Russian, Ukrainians, who are who are going to fight.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct, absolutely. And Take the toll on both sides, and you might be surprised by the result. I think the Russian military, of course, I'm not there and this is speculation. The Russian military has slowed down, and part of that reason is not to keep the civilian corridors open. And I think the Ukrainian military has made it more difficult on purpose, especially some of these battalions that are desk squad battalions have gone out of their way to keep the civilians locked into these cities in danger because it's in their interest to do so. So there's no reason why Ukrainian military who have killed Ukrainian civilians for years would change their policies. They would have no conjunctions about wiping out, for example, people with white armbands in Buka.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“hypocrisy of America that they can support such evil, such evil. Now, going back to your larger question about, yes, it's a terrible refugee disaster, but again, we'd have to get the numbers. Let's get the numbers and get evidence because I would ask you, I'm not sure at this point, whether more civilians were killed before 2022 in Donbass than have been killed in this.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were killed not necessarily by some of them by maybe accident and this and that, but certainly a large number of that is responsible to the Ukrainian military and the Nazi-related battalions who have done a good job of desquatting that whole area. And remember, I did a film about Salvador. I know a little bit about desk squads and how they work. And I know about paramilitaries because in South America, they're all over the place. America supports hates Venezuela. It goes on about Venezuela. But do they tell you anything about Colombia? It's next-door neighbor. Colombia for years has been plagued by paramilitaries that are right-wing. And the United States has said nothing about them, except occasionally there's a newspaper report now. So this support of desquads by the United States is all over the world. It's not just in South America and Central America, where we see plenty of evidence of it. It's here too. And this is what's horrible about this whole thing.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, yeah, let's get back to that original question. You said, what was he thinking at that time? We never answered that. Now, by the way, among those people who have been ruined by this war, you have to include the 2014 to 2022 Ukrainian Russians, 14,000...”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This attitude, this very, very hostile to Russia has hurt us. The whole world is being hurt by this. And no one calls them out. No one calls them out. Zelensky backed off from his platform running for president. And as president has been ineffective, did nothing to promote. On the contrary, went the other way and seemed to support the Ukrainian aggression.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My point was that it was a very dangerous place, Ukraine. People were being killed. Death squads were out there. Medvedev, they stripped him of his television stations. Very suddenly, this is Zelensky, the new president, Zelensky was elected on a peace platform. Remember that. 70% of the country was for him to make peace with Russia. He did he ever even try to make peace with Russia? He attend any of the Minsk II agreements. Did he visit? Did he pay any attention to Putin? Did he go to Russia? No. Not at all. The moment he got into office, I'm convinced that the militant sector of the right sector parties of Ukraine let him know that you will not make a deal with Russia. There will be no concessions to Russia. This is very dangerous. This is where...”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which Ukraine used to be before 2014. It was neutral from 1991 to 2014, neutral, very important. Poroshenko, it just immediately went into an anti Soviet Cold War position as an ally of the United States.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian position, they've been threatened by the state. From 2014 to 2022, there's been a set of hideous murders that people don't even know about in the West, journalists, people who speak out, liberals, people who I interviewed Viktor Medvedev, who they make out to be some kind of horrible person. But Medvedev was a very important figure in the administration of Kushma, the first Ukrainian prime minister in the 1990s, and he did a great job on the economy. He was a very thoughtful man, and if you'll see my interview, it's called Ukraine Revealed. He's very thoughtful about the future of Ukraine. He doesn't want to go back and join Russia. He wants it to be an independent country. Ukraine is independent, and he wants it to be a functioning economic democracy, more or less, a democracy, if you can get that, but between that exists in a neutral state.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm speculating. I don't know. I see that. And I also. Perhaps he thought in his mind that there would be a A faster resolution that the Ukrainian, because the evidence had been that the Ukrainian Russians The Ukrainian army had folded so many times and that they were only backed up and they were stiffened by the resistance of the Nazi-oriented Azov battalions. That was a factor, of course. And that is a big factor for the Russians because these people are very tough. See, what people don't understand is that Ukraine since 2014 has been a terrorist state. They've been run anytime a Ukrainian has expressed any.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, it's not This one I cannot answer you faithfully because first of all we don't know what he was told if he was indeed getting the right intelligence estimates from what I said earlier in that essay I wrote, you would think he was not well informed perhaps about the degree of cooperation he would get from the Ukrainian Russians in Ukraine. That would be one factor that he wasn't Didn't assess the operation correctly. Remember this, Mr. Putin has had this cancer, and I think he's licked it, but he's also been isolated because of COVID. And some people would argue that the isolation from normal activity, which he was meeting people face to face, but all of a sudden he was meeting people across the table 100 yards away or whatever, 10 yards away. It was very hard. Perhaps he lost touch with contact with people.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think many of us thought that the United States is building this up into an invasion. In other words, that is the nature of false flag operations when you create this propaganda. They are going to invade, they are going to invade. And then when they invaded, the United States was completely ready and all their allies were completely ready for the invasion, correct? So why did Putin do that? He fell into this theoretically into this trap set by the United States. Here you're telling all your allies across the board they're going to invade.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“into the situation with the idea of invading Ukraine, not only Donbass, but invading all of Ukraine and getting rid of the decapitating the government there, which is all assumption. We don't know what they would intended to do.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very good question. You see what the American press has not said, and the Western press has not said is that on February 24, was it, on that day what they invaded, the day before, if you check the logs of the European organization that was you supervising, was in the field in Ukraine. These are neutral observers. They were seen heavy and heavier artillery fire going into Donbass from the Ukrainian side. So they had apparently Ukraine had 110,000 troops on the border. They were about to invade Donbass. That was the plan. That's what I think. Russia, because of the buildup on the border of Donbass, brought 130,000 troops to the area near Donbass, right? So you have buildup of forces on both sides, but you wouldn't know that from reading the press in the West. You'd believe that the Russians suddenly put all these men into.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a very good question, and I've asked that several times, and I don't have the, I have not talked to him since about two years now. It's a very good question”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For that matter, why were they not talking about the killings in Donbass and Lugansk during that 2014 to 2022 period? That is what is, it's a crime. There were so many people that were killed, many of them innocent, many of them innoc”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now it's Macron. I hope because he was talking to Putin would at least have an independent viewpoint that could be helpful here. So he rolled it up. He may have told Putin something else, but within days he'd rolled it up and gone along with the United States position, which was enforced by the United States in a very fierce way. The propaganda, as I say, I don't know how much time you spend in America, but it was vicious and everything was anti-Russian. Russia was killing all these people, shooting down civilians, although there was no proof of it. These are the accidents of war. But all of a sudden, it was a campaign of criminality, and they were talking about bringing Putin into war crime trial. Well, why didn't they talk like that when Iraq was going on? And Bush was killing far more people.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that has influenced their mindset for years now, since nineteen forty. De Gaulle was the 60s. He actually reversed the whole flow and he was, it was, I think it was Sarkozy who put France back into NATO.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and had called Bush and they were getting along. So even Putin said, I won't go, don't go into Iraq. This is not the solution. He didn't oppose Afghanistan, but he opposed Iraq. and Schroeder stood for the old Europe. I remember de Gaulle, Charles de Gaulle. He was independent of the United States. Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO because he saw the dangers of NATO, which is to say you have to fight an American war when they say and they put nuclear weapons on your territory in England and France and Italy and Germany when they do that, you're hitched to this superpower and you have no say in what they're going to do if they declare war and they use your territory you're going to be involved in a major conflict I'm talking about sovereignty where is that sovereignty they don't have it”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm obviously intuition here is working. I just don't feel that they have freedom to say what they really think and they're scared to say it. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003. I remember with great, in a sense, satisfaction that at least France, Chirac, who I had not really known much about, stood up and said the United States, we're not going to join you in this expedition basically into madness. Schroeder in Germany, same thing. Of course, Putin condemned the invasion, and Kupun had been an ally of the United States since 9-11, if you remember correctly.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is very dangerous for Europe, very dangerous. This goes back to my idea what I was saying earlier about sovereignty. These countries don't really give me a sense that they have sovereignty over their own countries. They don't feel”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Propaganda, as I've seen in the West. And that includes France too, because I was there recently in England. England is, of course, really vociferous. It's shocking to me how quickly Europe moved in this direction, and that includes Germany. I have German friends who express to me their shock over Ukraine. I have Italian friends, same thing. And Italy, of course, has been perhaps the most understanding and compassionate of countries. So it's quite evident that there's a united, and this attests to the power of the United States, and of course you have Finland and Finland, which has generally been reasonable jumping and talking about joining NATO and Sweden too. Generally, there's been some more restraint in Europe. That's what surprised me the most. How quickly they fell into this NATO basket.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's very hard to be honest in this regard because the The West has brought down a curtain here at anyone who questions the invasion of Ukraine and its consequences is. Is an enemy of the people it's become so difficult. I've never seen in my lifetime ever such a Wall of”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gorbachev is we have no respect for Gorbachev even. Even at this juncture, when can you see Gorbachev's ideas printed in most American newspapers? Very rarely, very rarely, and recently not at all. So Gorbachev, who was our hero back in the American hero back in 1980s, has now been condemned to the garbage can, so to speak, of history.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They see each other or he knows he's there at the Mayday Parade. His attitude is funny. It's very human. He says, you know, he's welcome. He's pension. He's a pensioner. He's done his duty. There's no animus towards him. Even when Gorbachev in the early days, you remember, criticized him for his manners in terms of democracy. But I don't know that that becomes a quarrel. But frankly, by the end of the situation, it's very clear that Gorbachev is now moved closer and closer to the, says Russia is now really under attack. He sees it. He sees where the United States has made a concerted effort to undermine Putin. And he's repeated this several times about Ukraine. I think you've seen what he said. You can quote it.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his wife in him Katarina van Hovel, who's an editor, publisher of The Nation magazine, would go to Russia several times a year and talk to their friend Gorbachev. Gorbachev's an interesting character. I talked to him, interviewed him, not interviewed him, but talked to him at length. And I like him very much. And I saw that divide, as you saw in the Putin interviews between Gorbachev and Putin early on in the interviews, you sense Putin doesn't particularly care for Gorbachev because in his point of view he screwed up the administration of Russia and is responsible for so much of the disaster of leaving all those people outside the Soviet Union. So these are problems that continue into the future.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could get. I would go to Stephen and I'd say, I'm confused here. Tell me the history of this accusation of poisoning against this person and so forth. And he'd explain it to me, I think, the clearest ways that I understood. And he said to me once, he said, most of these people who go to Russia and write this stuff about Putin are going off internet. The internet has really been a source of a lot of fractured facts here. He said pure analysis. You have to go back to the texts, all the documents, and to really fully understand. But he spoke Russian.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It behooves you to do some research And frankly, when coming to research, you're going to have a problem because if you go to the Americanized versions of Russian history, you're going to run into a problem. And that includes even Wikipedia. They will tell you things that are just not factually supported. So it was a problem in terms of, if you read all the books in the American Library about Putin, there's nothing positive about it. They awful. They're awful. And a lot of them, I had a good relationship with Professor Stephen Cohen, who's the most, I think, one of the most informed men on Russia. He did a lot of research all his life. And New Gorbachev very well, and was very analytical about all these situations that happened before his death in 2019. I'm not quite sure when Stephen died, but I knew him well. And he gave me the best information.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take that into account. I absolutely take that into account. I know, I mean, doing Castro, he's a wonderful speaker. He's charismatic. So is Chavez. Look at those interviews. I took it into account, but Putin doesn't play that game. He doesn't charm you. He doesn't try to overwhelm you with... Bonamie at all He just said ask your question I'll give you my answer straight here it is and he analyzes it this is the history of NATO this is the history of our relationship with the United States how many times have we tried to talk to them about such and such and such and such and each time we get nowhere In fact it's a very I would like to get along with the United States so much. He's saying it. He's saying it so clearly in all his words.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you saw the reception to the Poon interviews in America was hostile without seeing it. So many people criticized my series without having seen it. I went on a show, a television show with this famous Colbert. You know, he's very famous in America. And I was shocked on the show to find out that he hadn't seen anything of the four hours. He was just attacking Putin through me. I was complicit, therefore I was a Putin supporter. And the show was a disaster. It's one of my worst television shows I actually had to just shut up and get off the air. I mean, at some point, it was embarrassing because the audience too was clapping for COVID on anything he said.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything he says, he was much harsher. He speaks Russian in a much harsher manner than actually Putin does, who's very, on my interview, I left him in his original language with translator. And I think that's important because he expresses himself very clearly and calmly. When you listen to the American broadcast, it's a belligerent person who looks like he's about to bang his shoe on the table. And secondly, the questions are highly aggressive from the beginning. There's no sense of rapport, there's no sense of, well, it's why Mr. Boone did you poison this person? Why, Mr. Poon, did you kill this person? Why are you a murderer? I mean, it's blunt, blunt negative television.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do, but I don't think he made judgments on it. I think he was pleased. He doesn't go either way. You see, he's pleased. I mean, it went well and he was happy for us, but I don't think he had great enthusiasm expressed it to me. He trusted me. And you can see the way he dealt with me each time. He warmed up to me four times. The first time I might have been a little stiff, you're asking, you don't know who you're dealing with and so forth. I understand that. But he's used to it now. He's done a lot of press. The worst press he's done, frankly, has been the American press. And not because of his fault, but because of the way they have treated him. If you look at the interviews, they're awful. First of all, I noticed one thing as a filmmaker right away. They use a dub, an overdub. They put a Russian speaker.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who never asked for one thing, never he was an interview, it was freeform. I ask anything you want. No restrictions, no rules. As with Castro, frankly, Castro did the same thing as De Chavez. So I've had good luck in interviewing free-ranging subjects, people willing to express themselves. He's much more guarded than Castro or Chavez, because as you know, he's setting government policy when he speaks. And anything he says can be taken out of context.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, a muscular and a major point on going back to nuclear energy, you know, he was, he never believed in it at first, apparently. He was going for batteries, right? And he put a lot of money into batteries. He made them bigger and bigger batteries, but it just, as Bill Gates has said, it's just, it's not going to get us there.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I like Musk for that. Just for that only. But I also appreciate his adventuresome, his nature and his desire to explore the world and to ask questions.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I saw your interview with Mr. Musk, who I appreciate. At least he speaks freely. I'm positive about him owning Twitter because Twitter has become censorship city, as has all the major tech that we are now seeing in the United States is so un-American and shocking to me.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. Now, of course, the question of money, the charge is that he's the richest man in the world, are ludicrous, certainly doesn't live like it or act like it. If you're rich, I've been around a lot of rich people in my life. You'd probably have too. In America, you run into them. So many of them are arrogant.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That far, just respect. And this man, Yeltsin, was in many ways ridiculed by the Russians He turned over the power because he felt like he was overwhelmed. He turned over the power to this man because why? How many people had he fired before him? Several several prime ministers, this, that. Why did he turn power over to Mr. Putin? Because he respected him for his work, ethic and his balance, his maturity. And that's what I can say I saw in him. Poor person from a poor family who worked his way up through the KGB of Americans keep saying he's a KGB agent. But it's like saying, you know, George Bush was a CI agent. But he became, you grow, you grow in your life. And he went from this KGB to this technocratic position. He dealt with many problems, including the Chechnyan War, which was a very difficult situation, as well as the Russian submarine. Several things happened early that balanced.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never saw him lose his temper. And I mean, you have to understand that most people in the Western way of doing business get emotional. I don't see that. I saw him as a balanced man, as a man who had studied this like you have. There's a calmness to you that it comes from studying the world and having a rational response to it. It's interesting. His two daughters, one of them is very scientific, and the other one's doing very well in another profession, but they're thinking family. His wife, too, was, I can't talk for the new wife because I don't know about it, but he kept his family with great respect. He's raised his daughter's right. He served Yeltsin the way he looks at it. He served Yeltsin well. And he never trashed Yeltsin. Certainly a lot of people did. But I asked him repeatedly, you know, was he an alcoholic, this or that? But he wouldn't even go.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For honestly, and I'm not naive, I've talked to a lot of powerful people in the movie business. There are powerful people, and many of them are corrupted. I've talked to many people in my life. I've been in the military. I've had other jobs. I have to say I found him to be a human being. I just found him to be reasonable, calm.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It changed, and our thinking changed in a negative way. We no longer respected it as a country. We were seen as a man. And the man we had trashed repeatedly, repeatedly as a poisoner, as a murderer, none of which has ever been proven, but which has always been repeated and repeated to the point at which it becomes like an Orwell mantra. It becomes like he is, of course, the bad guy.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The factions in Russia are very much there. So when people refer to Russia as Putin, they're mistaken. And they do this regularly in the New York papers and all this. They say, Putin did this. Putin did that. Putin's doing that. But it's Russia that's doing it. And that's what there's a distinction there that it's changed. In the old days, I would read about Khrushchev, but it was never Khrushchev personally. It was about the Soviet Union. There was respect for a country, and when it started to get personal with Putin,”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I firmly believe that. I don't think you can go against the will of the people. Now, it expresses itself in many ways. At the ballot box and so forth, but also in other ways in Russia. There's a strong currents of opinion. So contrary to what the position of him as a dictator, he wouldn't last if he was unpopular. Number one. Number two, Russia is much more divided than people know. There's other factors in Russia. There are always tensions around the Kremlin who has power, who doesn't have power. That's been going on for 100 years.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keep in mind that he's been unlike most modern leaders, he's been in office off and on because there was a Medvedev was president and he was not. Literally in charge. He took another appointment at that point, but he was still very much involved. But for 20 years, more or less, he's been at the... Administrator of the state, the protector of the state. And he's apparently done a good enough job that the Russian people have kept him there because contrary to what many people think, I really believe that if the Russian people didn't want him, he would be out.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to destroy the interests of other countries, no, that he was out there to provoke the interests of Russia, but at the same time keep a balance, keep the world into a harmony. This has always been his picture. Peace was always his idea. In other words, he always referred to the United States in all these interviews as our partners. And I said, will you stop using that word? They're not. And he was a little bit slow in waking up to what the United States was doing.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to know whether They thought because we couldn't get the information war that the United States was fighting against Russia was in evidence back then. It was full out the condemnation of Russia on all fronts. I never saw a positive article about Putin. And although when I traveled in the world and I traveled a lot doing documentaries, it was very clear in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia there was respect for him, that he was a man who was getting job, his job done in the interests of Russia. He was, as I said in the documentary, a son of Russia. Very much so, in the positive sense, a son of Russia. Not that he's out there.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forget the sneer that I saw there. That emblemized the United States reaction. Also there were several other American representatives who were laughing, kind of mocking Putin, who was very serious. I felt that it was a divide there. So since then, I mean, in a certain sense, the Europe reaction to Putin is crucial, and they were more with him back then. And a big thing for America was always to keep NATO, to keep Europe in its pocket as a satellite. And with this recent war, of course, they've succeeded beyond their dreams. The Russians have fulfilled the fantasy of the United States to finally be this aggressor that they have pictured for years. Can talk about that later”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, sixty some other countries that where terrorism had some signs of Wherever America judged would be a dangerous country, we had the right, you're either with us or against us. Now, that is a disastrous policy and led to one thing after another. The Iraq war never learned a lesson. The neoconservatives were never fired, never thrown out of office, the people who prosecuted that war are still around. Many of them are still around, and they're obviously guiding America now.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't that at the heart of the doctrine of the neoconservatives and the pact for the new American century? They wrote that in 1996-7. They said there shall be no emergence of a rival power. It was very clear it was about power. And they've stuck to that doctrine, which is if you start to get dangerous in any way or have power, we're going to knock you out. Now that won't work, but I don't believe it can work. And that is unfortunately a policy the United States is following. And the neoconservatives group, which is very small, but it's very strong apparently, and their idea has resonated. It was behind the George Bush's invasion of Iraq. It was part of not only Iraq, but cleaning out the whole world, draining the swamp, going to Afghanistan first. And then although Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda's attack going after Iraq.”
2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source