“The video is actually from Afghanistan and shows footage from American Apache attack helicopters engaging Taliban fighters.”
Are you sick of hearing about Russia and/or ‘Fake News’ yet? What if I told you that there was one piece of content on Russia and the #FakeNews that you should consume today? I can promise you, this instant classic will make you laugh at both the audacity of the story and sheer ludicrousness of the official reaction.
In case you missed it, Oliver Stone recently released his four-part series “The Putin Interviews” on the premium cable channel Showtime. Stone’s interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin were recorded over a two year timeframe and Showtime claims that they provide “intimate insight into Putin’s personal and professional lives,” as the “most detailed portrait of Putin ever granted to a Western interviewer.” However, some Russian journalists recently called the authenticity of at least some of the information portrayed by the series “highly suspect.”
During one segment, Putin shows Stone a video on his smartphone that he claims portrays Russian airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria. However, a small group of Russian journalists demonstrated that the video not only contains zero representation of the Russian military in action, but that the targets aren’t even ISIS. The video is actually from Afghanistan and shows footage from American Apache attack helicopters engaging Taliban fighters. The exchange occurs at roughly the 49th minute in part 3 of the 4 part Putin Interviews. While showing Stone the video, Putin claims “That’s how our air forces are operating. These militants are running with arms, not just machine guns.”
Footage of “Russian helicopter bombing ISIS” shown to Oliver Stone by Putin appears to be taken from 2013 US Afghan video.H/t @meduzaproject pic.twitter.com/qmWD1W6Tnw
— CIT (en) (@CITeam_en) June 20, 2017
While it is true that Russia began a military campaign in Syria in September of 2015 that has involved multiple airstrikes the video that Putin shows Stone however, was available online as late as 2012, over three years before the Russian military became embroiled in the Syrian Civil War. Even more disturbing/hilarious is that in the video Putin shows Stone, there is an audio track where someone went so far as to overdub a Russian language track. The Russian government was either so convinced that they could not be caught or cared so little if they were, that the President of their country did all of this on camera, for a documentary that was going to receive wide release.
Despite being caught red-handed, the Russian government not only remained unapologetic, but insisted that the story related by Putin was completely accurate. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the video was given to Putin by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and therefore completely legit. For his part, Stone initially claimed the allegations were “blogging bullsh*t” and defended the Russian president, asking “Why would he have faked it?” Apparently, the Natural Born Killers director has forgotten about the Russian leader staging photo ops so he could capture endangered snow leopards, go hunting while shirtless, and find ancient artifacts while scuba diving in the Black Sea.
After the Russian group Conflict Intelligence Team tweeted the side-by-side video demonstrating that the video Putin was showing was fake, the story went viral in Russia last month. Responding to a question from the Russian news site Meduza, Peskov claimed that any allegations about the video were “total nonsense.” Stone defended the accuracy of the Putin Interviews, telling Stephen Colbert on a promotional appearance on his talk show that Putin had been “abused” and “insulted” by the media. There is no word on when Stone will be apologizing to the real-life people whom have been abused and insulted as subjects of his fiction portrayed as historical portrayals.
