Oliver Stone - The Putin Interviews

OS:Have you read the 25 page report?

VP:Yes, I have. One intelligence service says that there is a great probability that Russia has interfered. Another intelligence service says that the probability, the certainty is not that great. They make some conclusions based on the analysis that they have conducted. But there is nothing concrete. Nothing clear-cut. You see? I don’t know if that is proper. It reminds me of an ideology, kind of a hatred for a certain ethnic group like anti-Semitism. If someone doesn’t know how to do something, if someone turns out to be incapable of addressing this or that matter, anti-Semitists always blame the Jews for their own failure. They blame the Jews. Those people have the same attitude towards Russia, they always blame Russia for anything that happens. Because they do not want to recognize their own mistakes and they are trying to find someone to shove the blame on, on our side.

OS:And it seems that Senator McCain, for example, today or yesterday was proposing a veto, a Senate veto against any lifting of sanctions from Trump—in advance.

VP:You know, there are many senators like that in the United States, unfortunately, many senators who think the same. Well, probably not that many but there are still some. Well, honestly, I like him—Senator McCain—to a certain extent.

OS:[laughter] Okay.

VP:And I’m not joking. I like him because of his patriotism, and I can relate to his consistency in fighting for the interests of his own country. You know, in Ancient Rome there was Marcus Porcius Cato, the Elder, who always finished all his speeches with the saying, “One and the same, Carthago delenda est.” [Carthage must be destroyed.] The Romans had grounds to hate Hannibal who approached Rome during the Second Punic War and he was very close to Rome—70 miles or so. We and the US have never been involved in a confrontation such as Carthago and Rome. In the end, Rome emerged victorious from that war. And how did that end? Hannibal, as is known, took his own life. And Rome, in 400 years or so, was destroyed when the barbarians came. And certain conclusions, and certain lessons, can be learned from that. If these cities had not fought one another, if they had agreed on fighting a common enemy, if that had happened, then one [Hannibal] wouldn’t have taken his own life and the others [Roman Empire] would have survived as well. People with such convictions like the Senator you mentioned, they still live in the Old World. And they’re reluctant to look into the future, they are unwilling to recognize how fast the world is changing. They do not see the real threat, and they cannot leave behind the past which is always dragging them back.

We’ve been supporting the US fight for independence. We were allies during World War I and World War II. Right now there are common threads we are both facing, like international terrorism. We’ve got to fight poverty across the world, the environmental deterioration which is the real threat to all humanity. After all, we’ve piled up so many nuclear weapons that it has become a threat to the whole world as well. And it would be good for us to give it some thought. There are many issues to address.

OS:Well, Russia has been accused of enormous treachery now. Now this is a major charge and the media repeats it and repeats it, and it seems to have entered into the lexicon in the United States—it’s just taken for granted. You can say Russia hacked the election, and many people say Trump is in the Kremlin’s pocket, has a debt to the Kremlin. So, you see where this leads. It makes it impossible to correct relations with Russia. Very difficult for Mr. Trump if indeed he intends to do so, to reset relations.

VP:As I said, and I can say that again—any talk about our influencing the outcome of the election in the United States, all these are lies. But we that see this campaign of manipulating the information has a number of goals. First, they are trying to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump. Second, they are trying to create conditions that preclude us from normalizing our relations with the US. Third, they want to create additional weapons to wage an internal political war. And the Russia-US relations in this context are a mere instrument, a weapon in the internal political fight in the US.

OS:But many people are frustrated—and I can say this from talking to people in America who agree that this hacking charge is nonsense. It’s fraudulent. Many people agree with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks who said that the leaks that were given to him from the DNC were from a non-state actor. And he swore to that, and his record has been solid. To my knowledge—he has been extremely forthright in his methods of operation since 2006 when he formed WikiLeaks. That’s my prelude, but I’ll ask the question now. The question is—many Americans are frustrated that Russia has not really made an effort, a bigger effort, to defend itself, to come out on the public relations front, for example, taking the 25-page report and technically shredding it and dealing with all the inaccuracies in it, as best it can, and making a bigger public response and objection to the accusations thrown at it. Why haven’t you done that?

VP:You see, it’s internal politicking inside the United States and we do not want to get mired in that. Many in the US think that all these claims about hacker attacks are fraudulent and we are glad that there are people like that. However there are people who promote this idea and express this is an insane notion because they want to use it as an instrument of political attack, and our refutation is not going to stop them from doing that. They are only going to use our refutations in order to continue this war using new instruments. We know all their tricks.

OS:Well it seems to me that if you know their tricks you could make some kind of statement about cyber warfare and give specifics of why this was not possible, why there should have been a trace, I mean there are so many different avenues you can explore. It seems as if Russia doesn’t care about defending itself against these accusations. Many accusations fly by but Russia treats it as if it’s business as usual.

VP:Well, yes, you are right. We do not particularly care about those accusations because we’re not concerned about that. This is an internal issue for the United States. I’d like to say once again—I want to be heard—whoever those hackers are, they couldn’t have made any serious difference in the course of that electoral campaign. And if they have revealed something, they have brought to light the real problems of American political life. They have not lied. They have not made up anything. The political forces have to handle these issues themselves, instead of trying to put the blame on the hackers who have only shed light on the problems that exist. It doesn’t matter where these hackers come from—from Russia, from Latin America, from Asia, maybe they’re from Africa.

OS:Well, is there any evidence in cyber space that Russia can present in its defense?

VP:There is no evidence that we are the ones to blame. And that is the greatest proof, the greatest defense we’ve got. Those reports that you mentioned from the NSA and the CIA, they’ve got no concrete facts. All they have are some promptings and also some suppositions, allegations.

OS:Yeah, I just think there is a more effective response that could have been made. And I understand how difficult it is, but it just seems like there’s an energy lacking in the Russian response, not to be upset and angry at this. To take the adult position and try to say something that would resonate with people in the American populace so they would understand Russia’s point of view, that has not come across to me.