In response to those who took exception with his claims that the Ukrainian crisis involved “outside agitators,” Oliver Stone took to social media to advance his argument, saying that Ukrainians are the victims of a US strategy akin to Cold War 2.0.
This week, Stone stirred a political firestorm with his views on what he believed sparked the Ukrainian crisis, following a private interview with Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian president who was ousted in the February 2014 coup.
“It seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 policemen, wounded some 85 and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside, third-party agitators,” Stone said, following his four-hour conversation with Yanukovich in Moscow. “Many witnesses, including Yanukovich and police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions – with CIA fingerprints on it.”
According to the American-born filmmaker and writer, Ukraine is just the latest country in a long list to fall prey to “America’s soft power technique called ‘Regime Change 101.’”
Stone’s comments reverberated like an earthquake on both sides of the Ukrainian divide, prompting him to elaborate on his original statement. Stone’s follow-up post began with him explaining that he has no particular sympathy for Yanukovich.
“For those of you angry with my analysis of Ukraine yesterday, please try to understand the bigger picture I’m offering,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I have no brief for Viktor Yanukovich, he may well be the most corrupt president Ukraine’s ever had. Ukraine has a dramatic history of corruption. That is not my point.”
However, he went on to argue that there is “ample evidence of pro-Western, third-party interference” in Ukraine, specifically mentioning Victoria Nuland and John McCain, two high-ranking American officials who appeared on the streets of central Kiev at the height of the Maidan showdown between police and protesters.
He also mentioned specific US government organizations, such as USAID, which has been operating in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the National Endowment for Democracy, which he remarked “apparently organize very well on Facebook and Twitter,” suggesting a possible method of organizing the protesters for an anti-government rally.
Supporters of European integration of Ukraine clash with the police in the center of Kiev January 25, 2014 (RIA Novosti)
Stone asked the question why so many Ukrainian policemen were killed and wounded during the occasionally violent rallies, “Yet no one has investigated this in the new government?”
Indeed, there has been much speculation that the so-called Maidan snipers were working in the pay of those who were trying to orchestrate the protests, and it was their aim to shoot members from both sides to trigger deeper social unrest.
To emphasize his point that the US has been playing games in Ukraine for a long time, Stone made a historical reference to 1949, when Defense Secretary James Forrestal, together with the cooperation of the CIA, created a guerrilla force codenamed ‘Nightingale’ that was comprised of ultra-nationalist Ukrainians.
For five years, according to Stone, the CIA was parachuting Ukrainian infiltrators into the country.
Stone implored his audience to see the “big picture,” which is that the United States “has never given up on using Ukraine as a launching pad to the underbelly of the Soviet Union, now a reduced Russia.”
“This Cold War 2.0 policy continues in a most deadly fashion, and whether they know it or not, the Ukrainian civilian population in the middle has suffered greatly from this ideological crusade,” Stone said.
