Oliver Stone’s ‘Putin Interviews’ Will Teach You Little About Putin, and Even Less About Russia 
 
 There is a documentary to be made about Russia under President Vladimir Putin that shares the Russian perspective, dispels American myths about the historic U.S. foe, and offers Putin’s perspective on some of the thorniest questions on Russia today. 
 
 Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews is not that documentary. 
 
 The Putin Interviews, a four-part series created from two years of conversations between Oliver Stone and Putin, somehow manages to both spout the Kremlin line and fall back on the laziest American clichés about Russia. In the opening credits, a map of the Soviet Union is transformed into a matryoshka doll. In at least the first two of the four parts, Stone aids and abets Putin, who lies by omission and pushes conspiracy theories, all while adding in such helpful information as “Russians are strong” and “Russians are macho.” 
 
 Showtime is touting the series as offering “Unparalleled access to the most controversial man in the world…in his own words.” And there is indeed some information that viewers will get from this access. They will learn that Putin feels he does not have bad days because he is not a woman (women, he explains, have natural cycles). They will learn that Putin has a flexible mentality because of judo. They will learn that Putin’s daughters are not interested in politics and corporate business, but in education and science (“You’re a very lucky man,” Stone says, not mentioning that one of Putin’s daughters is indeed allegedly tied to big business). 
 
 But when Stone recounts Putin’s rise to presidential power, they will learn that he at first rejected Boris Yeltsin’s attempts to make him prime minister, and that he won the office of president the first time with 53 percent of the vote based the successes of his first term. Nowhere is it mentioned that all of this was orchestrated by very wealthy, very powerful anti-communist forces of the day. They will hear Putin say that he did not put an end to privatization, but rather halted unfair schemes that only oligarchs who disrespected rule of law wanted to see continued. And privatization schemes did make oligarchs fabulously wealthy in ways that were not lawful in the 1990s, which were something of a Wild West. But the viewer will then see photos of Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Viewers will not learn that Berezovsky is one of the men who orchestrated Putin’s rise to power. Nor will they learn he fled to London after he began criticizing Putin, falling out with his his former protege, or that his death in the United Kingdom is still shrouded in mystery. The viewer will not learn that Khodorkovksy’s public accusation of government corruption got him a decade in a Siberian prison cell. 
 
 Viewers will learn that Putin worked as prime minister before returning to the presidency with 63 percent of the vote. If Putin has thoughts about the protests that surrounded his return to the Kremlin, viewers do not learn them; if Stone asked, both question and answer were left on the cutting room floor, at least in the first two hours. 
 
 Stone and Putin discuss Putin’s hesitancy to delegate, and Putin agrees with Stone’s assessment that he is the CEO of the company that is Russia. This could have been an opportunity to hear what Putin thinks of the idea that Russia is a mafia state, or of the connection between business and politics in Russia. Instead, we learn that Putin has “to have this sense of completion” when he begins a task. 
 
 Perhaps most insulting to the viewers, Putin says that he has evidence that the United States provided technical support to the Chechens, against whom Russia waged the first and — and Putin the second Chechen war early in his presidency. Putin says he cannot show Stone that evidence, however. Stone accepts that he cannot see this evidence and says it is contradictory that the United States would fight terror in Afghanistan while supporting it in Russia, which is perhaps the most simplistic rendering of the Chechen wars possible. Stone’s documentary doesn’t discuss how the Second Chechen War boosted Putin’s approval ratings, or that the Moscow bombings that the Kremlin blamed on Chechens were carried out by Russian agents. We see graphics showing the death tolls in the 2002 terror attack on a theater in Moscow and that of a 2004 attack on a school in Beslan. That many of the casualties in both cases were caused by a bungled Russian security response is not brought up. 
 
 It would be one thing if Stone just let Putin speak and reveal himself, allowing the audience some unique insight into a famous politician, similar to what Eroll Moris did with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in Fog of War. But Stone is not content to hear Putin’s side. He wants to encourage Putin’s side. He says he fears American neo-conservatives and their hunger for war (Putin fears them, too). He presents Foreign Affairs as an official government outlet. Foreign Affairs is many things — a journal, a leading publication, an outlet often confused with Foreign Policy — but it is not an official government publication. 
 
 In fact, the essays Stone presents to Putin come from the May/June 2016 issue, “Putin’s Russia: Down But Not Out.” Maria Lipman, Sergei Guriev, Gleb Pavlovsky (who used to advise the Kremlin), Daniel Treisman, and Stephen Kotkin all contributed writing for that issue. The authors are academics and think tank analysts and Russians. 
 
 Nevertheless, Stone tells Putin that he’s up against the official line. He points out the irony of Edward Snowden defecting to Russia — Soviet citizens, after all, used to defect to the United States. It’s not ironic, Putin says, because Russia is a democracy. That protesters from the Bolotnaya Square case — twelve of the 400 activists who were detained protesting Putin’s regime — were on trial as Snowden stayed in the Sheremetyevo Moscow airport is not a point Stone felt compelled to raise. 
 
 To be fair, there is one moment at the end of the second hour in which Putin gets a chance to respond to claims that Russia is not democratic. He says the issue is that the Russian people don’t want to vote for any of his opponents. And this may be true. We are then treated to a series of clips of opposition figures who are backed by the Kremlin. They are candidates from parties other than Putin’s United Russia who run with the Kremlin’s blessing to show some semblance of opposition. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, one of the men shown, is one such longstanding figure. Alexei Navalny, the actual opposition candidate of Russia currently running for president, is nowhere to be seen. 
 
 At the very end of the second hour, Stone, who filmed the interviews prior to the 2016 presidential election, asks Putin what he thinks of the candidates. Putin declines to comment on the candidates. This is not his place; he will work with whoever is elected. Stone marvels at this restraint. “If you say you didn’t like Trump, he’d win,” Stone tells Putin. “You have that amount of power in the U.S.” 
 
 This isn’t true, of course. Though hardly effusive, Putin’s statements about Trump during the election were generally positive. And Trump won. But the exchange is telling as emblematic of the entire series: at best, misguided, and at worst, just wrong. 
 
 Photo credit: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images ||||| It is a coup de grâce of American filmmaking that in “The Putin Interviews,” Oliver Stone first strongly recommends and then sits down to watch “Dr. Strangelove,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 comedic masterpiece about nuclear apocalypse, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s a combination of proper nouns that sounds like the setup to a one-liner. Putin shifts uneasily in his chair, apparently unused to even the simulated experience of leisure time, as onscreen President Merkin Muffley calls the Russian premier, Dmitri, to inform him that America is about to accidentally nuke the U.S.S.R. Stone then gifts the dinky DVD to Putin, as a kind of good-faith gesture between the director/documentarian/journalist and a strongman leader famously suspicious of anyone who questions his motives. Putin takes it into his office, but just before the door closes, he pushes it back open, confronting Stone and the cameras with his gift. The DVD case is empty; the producers left it in the DVD player. Through his translator, Putin jibes: “Typical American gift.” 
 
 The setup has a punch line after all. 
 
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 Showtime’s “The Putin Interviews,” which might be the most high-stakes documentary the network has ever aired, occasionally carries the lighthearted tone of farce. Love them or hate them, both Stone and Putin — men whose ideologies and reputations precede them — are so idiosyncratic and arresting that their dynamic has a hint of slapstick comedy. “The Putin Interviews” makes use of seemingly dozens of camera angles in every sit-down interview, building a portrait of Putin that is both comprehensive and dizzying — as if no matter how we approach the subject, we cannot slide under his defenses. Stone approaches the material with a slight buffoonery that may be just for show; he has just enough entitlement to blunder past Putin’s politesse, which reveals the Russian leader’s steely reserve underneath. Putin, on his part, is an adept self-spinning machine, with much more deadly charm than comes across in his state appearances. While discussing the Reagan presidency, Stone observes that the former president would have said he faced many of the same obstacles that Putin did. The Russian president retorts, with a sliver of a smile on his face: “Almost being broke and actually being broke are two entirely different things.” 
 
 Stone, a leftist firebrand who has advanced both well-regarded critiques and fringe conspiracy theories in his body of fiction and nonfiction work, put together “The Putin Interviews” from more than 30 hours of footage spanning 12 different conversations with the controversial Russian leader. Stone is less invested in investigating Putin than he is in re-narrativizing the history of American dominance in the post-Vietnam era; Putin is eager to assist him on this journey. The two go deep on America’s long game with NATO and its Middle East strategy that threw arms and money, catastrophically, at fundamentalist Muslims in unstable states. More often than not, Stone and Putin agree — on Edward Snowden, on American overreach, on Hillary Clinton. At times, Stone is skeptical of Putin, but for a leader strongly criticized for his civil rights abuses, it hardly seems that Stone is skeptical enough. On the other hand, there is some value in a profile that the subject finds flattering—it reveals who he wants to be. And Putin is revealed to be a terrifyingly competent leader, with a wide-ranging skill set that has spun circles around American presidents since the Clinton era. Putin gets many opportunities to brag about himself, in a disarming, down-to-earth way. It makes his baldfaced lies and bigotry all the more shocking. But it does not make him seem less dangerous. While enumerating what he sees as American betrayals of Russian trust during the Chechen War, he flicks a speck of dust off of his trousers with controlled, focused intensity. He gives the impression of carefully stoked simmering rage, hovering just at the edge of boiling over. To complete the image of sprawling feudal dominance, in one scene on Putin’s private jet, his administration’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov holds the boom mic as if he’s a lackey waving a palm frond. “The Putin Interviews” identifies him with cheeky specificity, delighting in his embarrassed look to the wide-shot camera. 
 
 In the two installments released to critics, Putin and Stone have not yet broached much on the topic of President Trump’s ties to Russia or the widely acknowledged Russian involvement in influencing the American 2016 election. But in the interviews that precede the election, Putin repeatedly points out that America meddles in Russia’s internal affairs, and the internal affairs of other countries, with impunity. He is, as far as we know, entirely right about that. So now what? 
 
 “The Putin Interviews” is a destabilizing documentary that challenges Americans’ narratives about ourselves and asks the viewer to engage in a conversation with a slippery subject. It’s riveting in how dangerous and intimate it feels, leveraging its multiple camera-angles and hand-held shots to make the viewer feel as if they, too, are in the room with Vladimir Putin. Foreign Affairs will likely have much to dissect in the dialogue, which often sounds like Stone and Putin are playing an invisible game of chess. It’s sobering to realize that if Putin is playing invisible chess with Stone, he is playing garishly lit 3-D chess with America — playing, and winning. ||||| When America sends its people to interview Vladimir Putin, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending an Anderson Cooper or a Christiane Amanpour, intrepid journalists well-versed in geopolitics and the art of the spiel. They’re sending people like Megyn Kelly, a race-baiter who rode the wave of one semi-challenging debate question all the way to a cushy gig at NBC News, or Oliver Stone, a revisionist history buff who’s spent the past few decades cozying up to dictators like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Putin. 
 
 Yes, in addition to qualifying Hitler and claiming the Jews run the media, Stone helmed the 2014 documentary Ukraine on Fire—a bizarre slice of Kremlin propaganda alleging that the CIA orchestrated the 2014 Ukrainian revolution (based on scant evidence), and featuring cameos from Viktor Yanukovych and Putin. If that weren’t enough, in September, the JFK filmmaker posited that the Democratic National Committee hack was an inside job and not, as 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded, the work of Russian agents. Stone’s The Putin Interviews, a new four-part series debuting on Showtime on June 12, should thus be viewed as nothing short of hero worship; the rough equivalent of a Twihard probing Robert Pattinson or Donald Trump interrogating a tacky gold chair. 
 
 The Putin Interviews, a documentary comprised of conversations with the Russian president that took place between July 2015 and February 2017, is clearly intended to humanize Putin and demonize America. In the first two parts provided to press, there are scenes of Putin feeding horses and strolling through lush gardens as string instruments sound; footage of the sexagenarian schooling men one-third of his age in hockey; and fawning Stone comments ranging from “You have a lot of discipline, Sir” to “You are a very lucky man” to “What do you bench?” OK, that last one I made up. 
 
 Stone not only fails to challenge Putin, but essentially cedes him the floor, allowing the cunning ex-KGB operative to spin more than the president’s toupee in a tornado. Putin denies Russia was the aggressor in virtually every global conflict, including the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. He champions Russia’s economy over that of the U.S., despite his GDP being a little more than half that of California’s. He even blames the Cuban Missile Crisis on the U.S. 
 
 At one point Stone, in an apparent effort to name-drop one of his movies, asks Putin: “Is Wall Street actively working to destroy the Russian economy in the interests of the United States?” He shrugs it off. “Do you think the National Security Agency had gone too far in its eavesdropping?” Of course he does. 
 
 Some of the director’s lame questions bear fruit in spite of themselves. When Stone asks Putin, “Do you ever have a bad day?” during a tour of the throne room, the Russian strongman giddily answers, “I’m not a woman so I don’t have bad days.” He then doubles down on the misogyny, explaining that, “There are certain natural cycles which men probably have as well, just less manifested. We are all human beings. It’s normal. But you should never lose control.” 
 
 A conversation about whether gays can serve in the military in Russia leads to the Stone question: “If you’re taking a shower in a submarine with a man and you know he’s gay, do they have a problem with that?” 
 
 Putin’s answer is not only homophobic, but completely bonkers. “Well, I prefer not to go to shower with him,” exclaims a cackling Putin. “Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master and a SAMBO master as well. And I can tell you this, that as head of state today, I believe it’s my duty to uphold traditional values and family values. But why? Because same-sex marriages will not produce any children. God has decided, and we have to care about birth rates in our country. We have to reinforce families. But that doesn’t mean that there should be any persecutions against anyone.” 
 
 The lion’s share of The Putin Interviews’ B-roll consists of news clips from RT, the propaganda arm of the Kremlin, and pro-Russia graphics. Putin admits to never having seen Dr. Strangelove, and, in the first two episodes’ most surreal sequence, the two sit down to watch Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War satire. “[Kubrick] foresaw some issues even from a technical point of view, things that make us think about real threats that exist,” Putin says in his mini-review. “The thing is that since that time, little has changed. The only difference is that the modern weapons systems have become more sophisticated, more complex. But this idea of a retaliatory weapon, and the inability to control such weapons systems, still hold true to this day. It has become even more difficult, even more dangerous.” 
 
 Stone and Putin chat in various locations throughout the doc, from the halls of the Kremlin to the great outdoors. In one exchange aboard Putin’s plane, he reveals his unvarnished thoughts on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 
 
 “There is no longer an Eastern Bloc, no more Soviet Union. Therefore, why does NATO keep existing? My impression is that in order to justify its existence, NATO has a need of an external foe, there is a constant search for the foe, or some acts of provocation to name someone as an adversary,” says Putin. 
 
 “Nowadays, NATO is a mere instrument of foreign policy of the U.S. It has no allies, it has only vassals. Once a country becomes a NATO member, it is hard to resist the pressures of the U.S.,” he continues. “And all of a sudden any weapon system can be placed in this country. An anti-ballistic missile system, new military bases, and if need be, new offensive systems. And what are we supposed to do? In this case we have to take countermeasures. We have to aim our missile systems at facilities that are threatening us. The situation becomes more tense. Why are we so acutely responding to the expansion of NATO? Well, as a matter of fact, we understand the value or lack thereof, and the threat of this organization. But what we’re concerned about is the following: We are concerned by the practice of how decisions are taken. I know how decisions are taken there.” 
 
 Huddled inside a car with Putin behind the wheel—in what is without question the worst episode of Carpool Karaoke ever—they discuss the plight of whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who was granted asylum in Russia after leaking top-secret government documents revealing a complex web of surveillance conducted by the U.S. against its allies and own citizens. Putin claims that the U.S. refused to agree to a deal years back that “stipulated for a mutual extradition of criminals,” and since “Snowden didn’t violate any [Russian] law,” and since “the U.S. has never extradited any criminals to us who have sought asylum there,” they refused to extradite Snowden back to America. 
 
 While he doesn’t agree with what Snowden did, Putin refers to him as “courageous” several times and asserts, “Snowden is not a traitor. He didn’t betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does he does publicly.” 
 
 The 2016 U.S. presidential election is briefly mentioned during a February 2016 chat within the halls of the Kremlin, with Putin maintaining that Russia is “going to be ready to work with whoever gets elected by the people of the United States.” When he adds, “I believe nothing is going to change no matter who gets elected,” he can’t help but unleash a knowing smirk. 
 
 Stone suggests that Putin could influence the U.S. election by endorsing a candidate, thereby causing his or her popularity to plummet. “Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere within the domestic affairs of other countries,” replies Putin, smiling wide. “That is one of the principles we stick to in our work.” 
 
 The Putin Interviews offer, first and foremost, a staggering display of mendacity on the part of both interviewer and interviewee. During a back and forth aboard his jet, Putin claims to have in his possession a letter from the CIA admitting that they provided technical support to the Chechens—including terrorist organizations—during the Second Chechen War. When Stone requests that he provide the letter, Putin responds, “I don’t think it would be appropriate. My words are enough.” 
 
 For Oliver Stone, they most certainly are. ||||| UPDATED with video: “You’ve gotten a little heat; people have said you’re being too cozy, you believe him too easily,” Stephen Colbert asked Oliver Stone about his four-part documentary, The Vladimir Putin Interviews. 
 
 “What do you say to people who say this is a fawning interview with a brutal dictator?” 
 
 Stone, who spent 20 hours with Putin for the project, that’s debuting on Showtime, insisted, “You have to be polite, because this was a two-year deal” and Putin is a very busy man, working 12 hour days “for almost 16 years now.” 
 
 “It’s politeness, and it’s curiosity, and it’s the way you ask the questions. I think he respected me and respected my work, and he knew I would give him a fair hearing. And it wouldn’t be chopped up to pieces,” he added. 
 
 In a clip shown to viewers, Stone explains to Putin his potential sway over the presidential election in the United States and Putin responds, “Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere within the domestic affairs of other countries,” adding, “That is one of the principles we stick to in our work.” 
 
 Stone responds: “Thank you sir, we will see you tomorrow. Talk about some heavier stuff.” 
 
 Explaining his response, Stone said he took Putin’s remark “at face value because I’m not – this is an important point for him that he keeps insisting on it.” 
 
 “No followup on that question?” Colbert wondered. “That doesn’t seem like an interview. That seems like an opportunity for him to merely propagandize,” Colbert suggested. 
 
 Stone promised he presses Putin in the fourth hour of the docu, about his own election coming up in 2018, and on now-POTUS Trump, “the whole hacking thing, and cyber warfare” which the director said is “very complex” and not to be taken lightly. 
 
 Colbert wondered if Stone likes Putin or trusts him, after spending so much time with him. 
 
 “He is a head of state. He has his own interests of Russia. I respect him for that, and I understand why he’s doing that,” Stone answered. Calling Putin “a strong nationalist,” Stone began. 
 
 “I never heard him badmouth the U.S. I heard him try to reach out and have a relationship with them. He called them ‘our partners’ repeatedly…And that was made fun of at one point, because it didn’t feel like the partnership was working both way. He really wants a partnership. There is a strong feeling he can still have a relationship with the US. That I felt very genuine about that.” 
 
 Later, Stone said of Putin, “I think he’s devoted to his country, and I’m amazed at his calmness, as I said, his courtesy. He never really said anything bad about anybody. And he’s really been through a lot and he’s been insulted and abused –“ 
 
 That’s where Stone began to lose Colbert’s studio audience, who had been effusive in applause when he’d takenthe stage. 
 
 “Abused in the press; in the media,” Stone clarified, appearing to think that would win them over. 
 
 It did not. 
 
 “I didn’t sense any kind of anger about that,” Stone said of Putin’s “abuse” in the press. 
 
 “Any thing about him negative you found? Or, does he have your dog in a cage someplace?” Colbert joked, the studio audience erupted in approval. 
 
 “What is wrong with détente with Russia?” Stone asked. “Why would you be against it? I don’t understand this mentality of — may be it’s because you hate Trump.” 
 
 “Hate is a strong word,” Colbert interrupted. “I don’t trust him.” 
 
 “You don’t trust him, therefore Russia is convenient as an excuse –” Stone plowed ahead. 
 
 “I don’t understand why our president will never say anything negative about Vladimir Putin, given that Putin is an oppressive leader of his country, who suppressed the free press and arrests his enemies,” Colbert interrupted again. “And that is not something that I, as an American, or a member of the press, can respect. And I’m surprised that you do respect that.” 
 
 Replied Stone: “You know I’ve always been for free speech.” 
 
 Colbert let that go, instead pointing out, “He doesn’t seem like he would be a hero of that.” 
 
 “No question he’s a social conservative,” Stone conceded. “I don’t know why you’re laughing,” he added, addressing the studio audience. 
 
 Because, of course, they were laughing at his remark. 
 
 “That seems like a mild description” of Putin, Colbert laughter-translated. 
 
 “I think if you watch patiently, you’ll see that it’s developed, it is a film that has a flow, from 2000 all the way up to 2016,” Stone said of the docu, debuting on Showtime. “We went back… to talk to him seriously about the election. It’s all done in that vein, and everything is above board.” 
 
 “Has he murdered a man? I wouldn’t know how to ask him that question,” Stone said, in maybe the most revealing moment of his sit-down with Colbert. “I’ve looked at the evidence too. If I believed it I’d go after it.” 
 
 For a second time, Colbert let it go, thanking Stone for being his guest. ||||| He could be just another Moscow commuter driving home from the office. Except that’s President Vladimir Putin behind the wheel as filmmaker Oliver Stone quizzes him on the fugitive Edward Snowden in a scene from his new documentary on the Russian leader. 
 
 The unusually smooth car journey through Moscow’s normally traffic-clogged streets isn’t the only strange moment in The Putin Interviews, the Oscar-winning director’s four-part documentary. While Putin expounds on favorite subjects including U.S. geopolitical overreach, he’s also shown staring stone-faced at the classic Cold War doomsday satire Dr. Strangelove. He explained that he never has an off day as president because he’s a man. 
 
 Vladimir Putin works out. Photographer: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images 
 
 “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days,” he tells Stone while giving a tour of the Kremlin’s gilded throne room. “I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.” 
 
 The director of JFK and Wall Street enjoyed extensive access to Putin for numerous meetings from July 2015 to February 2017, giving viewers a peek into the life of one of the world’s most powerful and secretive leaders. The first two hour-long episodes of the Showtime special that airs June 12-15, which were made available to Bloomberg before their release, offered little that’s new about the former KGB agent who’s ruled Russia for more than 17 years. 
 
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 The documentary follows on the heels of Putin’s interview in this week’s debut of NBC News’ “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly,” as controversy swirls in the U.S. over alleged Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and ties to President Donald Trump. Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump last month, is due to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday about investigations into the allegations. Trump has dismissed the claims as “fake news.” 
 
 Flexing Muscles 
 
 On the former National Security Agency contractor, Putin told Stone that “our first contact with Mr. Snowden was in China,” as he explained that Russia offered asylum because “we were told back then that this was a person who wanted to fight against violations of human rights.” 
 
 Elsewhere, Putin is shown indulging his now-familiar passion for playing ice hockey, and flexing his muscles on an exercise machine. He told Stone that he lifts weights and then swims every day. Putin’s also seen feeding carrots to a thoroughbred horse named after Dutch theoretical physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals at his residence. 
 
 Throughout, the three-time Oscar-winner uses an interview style that allows the Russian leader to set the tone, while the documentary avoids fact-checking Putin’s remarks or interviewing opposition figures. 
 
 ‘Judo Master’ 
 
 At times, it’s the Kremlin leader that seems to be the voice of moderation. Stone, who’s previously made films lauding the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, asks, “is Wall Street actively working to destroy the Russian economy in the interests of the United States?” Putin demurs, saying only that the U.S. Administration views Russia as “a competitor.” 
 
 In the barest hint of criticism, Stone also asked Putin if a law passed in 2013 outlawing gay propaganda to minors meant homosexuals faced discrimination. “There are no restrictions whatsoever,” Putin said, contrasting Russia with some Islamic states where he said gays face the death penalty. 
 
 But asked if he’d take a shower in a submarine next to a gay man, the Russian leader replied, laughing: “Well, I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master.” 
 
 While Dr. Strangelove apparently left him unmoved, Putin became more animated discussing what he sees as modern-day challenges to the nuclear theory of mutually assured destruction, particularly the U.S. program to develop a missile-defense shield. 
 
 “As of today a missile shield would not protect the territory of the United States,” he tells Stone after the director points out that it was U.S. Independence Day. “Nobody would survive” a war between nuclear superpowers, he said.
– Oliver Stone's The Putin Interviews, a four-part documentary for which the director got "extensive access" to the Russian president between July 2015 and February 2017, airs on Showtime June 12-15, and Bloomberg got early access to the first two episodes. Bloomberg notes that they offer "little that's new" about Putin, but that doesn't mean there aren't interesting moments, such as Putin being shown working out on an exercise machine, feeding a horse, or playing ice hockey. Three notable quotes: No bad days: "I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles." On whether he'd shower in a submarine next to a gay man: "Well, I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master." On the prospect of a war between nuclear superpowers: "As of today a missile shield would not protect the territory of the United States. Nobody would survive." Reviews for the documentary are varied, with many criticizing Stone for seeming to encourage Putin instead of challenging him. Foreign Policy says the documentary "somehow manages to both spout the Kremlin line and fall back on the laziest American clichés about Russia," while the Daily Beast calls it a "wildly irresponsible love letter" to Putin. But other outlets are not so critical; Variety, for example, says it's "a surprisingly intimate set of conversations" that creates "a destabilizing portrait" of Putin. (Putin was also recently interviewed by Megyn Kelly.)