It's 09:30 in the morning in Red Square and Oliver Stone is directing his subject, Vladimir Putin, for a grand entrance. Stone wants to know: when will the Russians and Americans finally be at peace?
They are filming The Putin Interviews, a four part one-on-one series of meetings with the Russian president. Putin is the man of the month in American newsrooms, having captured the wild imaginations of Washington. Stone calls to him through massive double doors, but Putin doesn't come. Stone then turns to his translator, "tell him to come in now." It's a rare opportunity for a Hollywood director to boss around one of the world's most powerful men. The translator calls out in Russian and Putin appears down a marbled hallway in a suit and tie, two white tea cups in hand. He could be in a French palace. But this is Moscow, known more for its communist days than its uber-rich Czarist days; an opulence that by some standards puts the Parisian and London aristocracies to shame.
"Coffee, sir?" Putin says in shy English. "Sugar?"
Thursday marked the final episode of the Showtime series over interviews conducted over a two year period between July 2015 and February 2017, a month after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Putin hasn't always been a headline. But with Trump in the White House, the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory is one reality TV show the news media can't shake. Stone's love for foreign policy intrigue at least makes him a Putin kindred spirit here. America's age old fear of the Russians, has made Putin public enemy number one and Stone his sounding board. For some unhappy campers, like John McCain, Putin has "no moral equivalent" in the United States. He's a dictator, a war criminal and tyrant.
"You've gone through four U.S. presidents: Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump. What changes?" Stone asks him.
"Almost nothing. Your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world," he says. Then, solemnly, "There is change...when they bring us to the cemetery to bury us."
See: Putin Dishes On Neocons And Hillary -- Forbes
What New Russian Sanctions Mean For Trump And Ukraine -- Forbes
A Deeper Look Inside The Senate Sanctions Bill -- Forbes
In the last installment of the Putin interviews, the Russian leader admitted to liking Trump. "We still like him because he wants to restore relations. Relations between the two countries are going to develop," he said. It's a sentence very few in congress would say, and almost no big name politicians outside of Trump would imagine saying on television. On Russia, you scold. There is no fig leaf.
In a recent sanctions bill in the senate, only Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee voted against it, making for a 97-2 landslide in favor of extra-territorial sanctions against Russian companies, namely oil and gas.
Stone asked him why did he bother hacking the Democratic National Committee's emails if he believed nothing would change on the foreign policy front.
STONE: Our political leadership and NATO all believe you hacked the election.
PUTIN: We didn't hack the election at all. It would be hard to imagine any country, even Russia, being capable of seriously influencing the U.S. election. Someone hacked the DNC, but I don't think it influenced the election. What came through was not a lie. They were not trying to fool anybody. People who want to manipulate public opinion will blame Russia. But Trump had his finger on the pulse of the Midwest voter and knew how to pull at their hearts. Those who have been defeated shouldn't be shifting blame to someone else....We are not waiting for any revolutionary changes.
Just then, editors cut to a video of Trump talking about Putin.
TRUMP: I hope I get along with Putin. I hope I do. But there is a good chance that I won't.
PUTIN: It almost feels like hatred of a certain ethnic group, like antisemitism. They are always blaming Russians, like antisemites are always blaming the Jews.
The editors then flashed to footage of John McCain on the floor of the Senate ranting and raving about Putin. Then Joseph Biden in the Ukrainian parliament, ranting about Russia. Putin tells Stone all of this is unfortunate. He thinks their view is"old world." He reminds Stone that Russia and the U.S. were allies in World War I and World War II. It was Winston Churchill that started the Cold War from London, despite having respect for Russia's strongman leader at the time, the real dictator, Joseph Stalin.
Does Russia want to return to the days of the monarchy? No, Putin says.
To Stalin's era? No, he responds, telling Stone that his parents, who died in 1998 and 1999, were Stalin supporters. Stalin support is particularly strong in what Putin calls 'the hinterlands', or better yet, Russia's 'mid west' states. Their lives were turned upside when state control was taken away. The upheaval was like the Great Depression, only besides the economic malaise, the entire political and financial model is gone too.
Putin says Russia is not going back to the USSR and said he believes the West uses Stalin's Siberian gulags as a means to discredit Russia, as if Stalin's brutality is simply in Russia's DNA.
This is where Putin comes across as a lay historian of world politics. He mentions Oliver Cromwell, a British soldier and notorious religious fighter. Churchill called him a dictator. Yet, this dictator's statue stands outside the House of Commons in Westminster.
Then there is Napoleon Bonaparte, a marauding imperialist who captured most of Europe in the 18th century after seizing power in a coup in 1799. He is paid homage in statues and monuments throughout Paris. Napoleon today would be the opposite of all that is decent in liberal Paris life. He was known for ordering violent smack-downs of slave rebellions in France's Caribbean colonies, like Haiti. Today, Paris is an open borders town for north African and Syrian migrants.
Europe simply has a dark history. You don't hear the Russians continually comparing French leadership to Napoleon wanna-be imperialists; or German leadership to fascist Nazis.
But what about the oligarchs? You and your oligarchs are like the Czars, Stone points out.
Nyet, says Putin. The oligarchs were more powerful under Boris Yeltsin in the early days of Russia's opening. They robbed the country blind and made exorbitant amounts of money, Putin says. When Putin came to power, they got in trouble. Many fled to London. Some went to jail, often on dubious charges.
Editors cut to something else during the exchange. It's about Ukraine. Victoria Nuland is on screen.
Nuland was in charge of Eurasian affairs at the State Department, which put Ukraine under her purview. Nuland, as a former Obama Homeland Security official once told me, was part of the "Democracy Nazis" that use human rights issues to support political regime change. In the video, Nuland admits to working with NGOs and Russian expat journalists that write in the U.S. and Europe to influence public opinion against the state narrative. They also help LGBT activist groups in Russia.
Nuland is famous for this little ditty, a leaked transcript of her conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the American diplomat stationed in Ukraine, where she tells him during the political crisis that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that Arseniy "Yats" Yatsenyuk was Washington's preference. Yats later became Ukraine's Prime Minister.
To date, there is no leaked conversation similar to this in the United States revealing a top level Russian diplomat like Sergey Kislyak talking to Foreign Affairs secretary Sergei Lavrov about Trump being "the guy". Imagine the reaction if such a transcript existed today. Trump would be finished. Collusion, evident. Vice President Mike Pence would be President. Trump might even be in jail.
Stone's interviews make you think, if you dare. And what you come up with is that there is nothing remotely similar to that circulating anywhere. In Ukraine, during a political upheaval, there was. And Washington's preferred candidate was chosen.
Americans are everywhere. They work everywhere. The National Security Agency is everywhere. Everything is bugged and wired. Japan is wired. Germany is bugged. Brazil, bugged. The United States could shut off the power grid or shut down a nuclear centrifuge in an instant without a verifiable trace. It worries the Russian leader because after the fall of communism, "We thought the world was open. We thought we were part of a global community. We let the Americans into our nuclear systems. Their technology systems are entrenched in ours."
Putin said the world needs rules regarding cyber warfare. He claims to have asked Obama about getting a treaty on this, to no avail. In November, on the eve of the U.S. elections, big Russian banks were hacked. VTB Bank was hacked. Alfa Bank was hacked. The Moscow Stock Exchange, also. Putin chuckles on "who did it?" and doesn't answer. He gives Stone his squinty-eyed smile, instead.
"How can Trump work with these intelligence agencies if they keep telling him that Russia interfered in our election and made him win?" Stone asks Putin. "It's a dead end."
Perhaps, in the best case, a cautious optimism will prevail over nihilism. "It's not a dead end," Putin says. "I do hope we find some common ground...we want to see practical results."
The Putin Interviews on Showtime was not a documentary. Putin is the only voice other than Stone's. But let's face it, the opposing view is not hard to find here.
Former American hedge fund manager Bill Browder wrote the book "Red Notice" to describe his dealings with the Putin government. He became a one-man lobbyist to get members of the Senate to pass a law sanctioning individuals involved in the death of his accountant, Sergei Magnitsky. Browder has the ear of Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin, who first proposed the Magnitsky Act way back in 2010. Cardin is an anti-Russia voice in the Senate.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an ex-Russian oil billionaire who funds at least three NGOs that fall in line with Washington's view on advocating for a Russia without Putin. Khodorkovsky's foundations were early supporters of Kremlin critic publication, The Interpreter, created by CNN's Russia expert and ex-Daily Beast editor, Michael Weiss. You will be hard pressed to find an objective article on Russia in any of those news outlets.
Stone's interviews simply give voice to the man behind a country where media objectivity is mediocre at best. If we can count on Russia Today to hem and haw about Washington and the perils of fracking, then so can we count on our political media to do the same about Russia.
Stone takes Putin to task at times, saying he looks like a "fox in a hen house" when he imagines out loud that there might already be a secret battle between the U.S. and Russia in cyberspace. "I believe cyber warfare can lead to a hot war," says Stone. Is Russia doing something about it? Come on, Mr. President, lay it on me...
Putin tells him, "Maybe. For every action...there is a counteraction."
