How Putin Seduced Oliver Stone and Trump
Masha Gessen at the NY Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/opinion/oliver-stone-putin-trump.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
"SNIP.............
Condition No. 1: Ignorance. It helps that Mr. Stone seems to have only the most vague, and largely inaccurate, ideas about Mr. Putin’s biography and Russian history. Mr. Stone’s ignorance of his subject allows him to listen uncritically as Mr. Putin lies.
In Episode 2, responding to a question about the state of democracy in Russia, Mr. Putin claims that Russia has “hundreds of television companies” that the state could not control if it tried. This is untrue but goes unchallenged.
In Episode 3, Mr. Putin tells a long and winding story about the origins of the war in Ukraine, culminating in the claim that the war began after nationalist Ukrainian Special Forces kidnapped ethnic Russians from eastern Ukraine. Mr. Stone appears to accept these fantastical claims.
Condition No. 2: A love of power and grandeur. Episode 2 is the story of a courtship, of sorts. Mr. Putin shows Mr. Stone his horse stables (intercut with stills of Mr. Putin riding). Then the two men watch a movie together. Then Mr. Stone watches Mr. Putin play hockey and fawns, praising Mr. Putin’s athletic prowess and vitality.
.............SNIP"