Iconic moviemaker Oliver Stone weighs in on Ukraine conflict

Oliver Stone, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, and vocal critic of US foreign policy, called on his Instagram followers to read several articles to better understand of how Russia came to unleash its military against Ukraine. The Sunday post is meant to counter “all the hysteria of Western media” and its propensity for “omitting key facts when inconvenient,” the director said.

The materials that Stone suggested for reading offer some “helpful and honest analyses” on the Ukraine crisis, he wrote.

The reading list includes articles written by Tony Kevin, who served as Australia’s ambassador in Moscow during the Cold War, Jonathan Steele, an acclaimed British journalist and author, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of news website Consortium News, and Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian anti-war activist who published her analysis in the same outlet.

The takes by Kevin and Steele are now somewhat outdated, considering that, contrary to their expectations, Russia did launch an attack on Ukraine after they were published on February 23.

Lauria’s piece focuses on the February 24 speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered as he announced Russian military action against Ukraine. Johnstone raised criticisms of Western hubris, which she asserted ultimately led to the bloody armed conflict in Ukraine.

Stone has interviewed Putin on several occasions and produced two documentaries about Ukraine, its history and the events of the 2014 Maidan mass protests and armed coup, which set the stage for the standoff between Russia and the West.