Oliver Stone, an American writer and an Oscar winning filmmaker will present his documentary about Ukraine [Revealing Ukraine] at the 65th Taormina Film Festival... in Sicily on June 30 - July 6. ... The documentary... reveals the details of the 2014 uprising in Ukraine, discloses the connection between interference to the recent presidential elections in the U.S. and Ukraine, casts the light into the current situation with the conflict in Donbas.

DAVID MUIR: …You have said you would solve this war [in Ukraine] in 24 hours. How exactly would you do that? And I want to ask you a very simple question tonight. Do you want Ukraine to win this war?
I want to get the war settled. I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. And they respect your president. Okay? They respect me. They don't respect Biden….
If I win, when I'm President-Elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other, I'll get them together. That war would have never happened. And in fact when I saw Putin after I left, unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell, but after I left when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it after I left, I said oh, he must be negotiating. It must be a good strong point of negotiation. Well, it wasn't because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it. And now you have millions of people dead and it's only getting worse and it could lead to World War 3. Don't kid yourself, David. We're playing with World War 3.

<small>In response to the opposition's calls to fire some of his ministers</small> I've recalled, you know, the film called The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed. Have you heard, how was he...? How was he called? Vysotsky!.. (prompted) Zheglov! Yeah. As he said: "You'll only get a bagel of a bublik, not Sharapov..." Or how did it go? "Hole of a bublik"! That's right. We understand these are only dirty political games.

[Q:] So Volodomyr Zelensky should have talked to Putin more, even with 100,000 Russian troops at his border?
[A:] I don’t know the President of Ukraine. But his behavior is a bit weird. It seems like he’s part of the spectacle. He is on television morning, noon, and night. He is in the U.K. parliament, the German parliament, the French parliament, the Italian parliament, as if he were waging a political campaign. He should be at the negotiating table.
[Q:] Can you really say that to Zelensky? He didn’t want a war, it came to him.
[A:] He did want war. If he didn’t want war, he would have negotiated a little more. That’s it. I criticized Putin when I was in Mexico City [in March], saying that it was a mistake to invade. But I don’t think anyone is trying to help create peace. People are stimulating hate against Putin. That won’t solve things! We need to reach an agreement. But people are encouraging [the war]. You are encouraging this guy [Zelensky], and then he thinks he is the cherry on your cake. We should be having a serious conversation: "OK, you were a nice comedian. But let us not make war for you to show up on TV." And we should say to Putin: "You have a lot of weapons, but you don’t need to use them on Ukraine. Let’s talk!"

On the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam] No one who's paid to cover these things seem to entertain even the possibility it could have been Ukrainians who did it. No chance of that.
Ukraine, as you may have heard, is led by a man called Zelensky. We can say for a dead certain fact that he was not involved. He couldn't have been; Zelensky is too decent for terrorism.
Now you see him on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of [US investment giant] BlackRock.
But don't believe your own eyes. Actually, Mr Zelensky is a very good man... of all the people in the world, our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend in the tracksuit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a damn. He's literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin.

Notice the intimacy with which the Americans deal with the two leading so-called “moderate”—and these are big shots, they both want to be president—Ukrainian opposition.... Tyagnybok, that they say has got to play a role, he’s the leader of the Freedom Party, the Svoboda Party, but a large element of that party, to put it candidly, is quasi-fascist.... This is the guy... that Senator John McCain in November or December went to Kiev and embraced. Either McCain didn’t know who he was, or he didn’t care.

In the tightly controlled and airproof "vertical of power" that is Vladimir Putin's Russia, even a handful of dissenting voices in legislative institutions—especially when they are loud and persistent—can present a serious threat to the system. Such was the voice of the late Boris Nemtsov.

[Spoken in English]: Today the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine, we are fighting for the values of Europe and the world ... in the name of the future. That’s why today the American people are helping not just Ukraine, but Europe and the world, to keep the planet alive, to keep justice in history. Now I’m almost 45 years old. Today my age stopped when the heart of more than 100 children stopped beating. I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the deaths. And this is my main issue as the leader of my people, great Ukrainians, and as the leader of my nation, I am addressing the President Biden, you are the leader of the nation, of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

The book recounts a tense phone call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart in October 2022.
"If you did this, all the restraints that we have been operating under in Ukraine would be reconsidered," Austin said to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to Woodward. "This would isolate Russia on the world stage to a degree you Russians cannot fully appreciate."
"I don't take kindly to being threatened," Shoigu responded.
"Mr. Minister," Austin said, according to Woodward, "I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don't make threats."

I would like to say that I am alive, although I cannot say that I feel very well, because I feel a deep and profound concern over what is happening in Ukraine now. Disguised behind a veneer of an allegedly legitimate government, there is a gang of ultranationalists and fascists now acting in Ukraine involving people who are now aspiring to presidential office.
..
I would like to remind you that I am not only the -- not only the legitimate president of Ukraine, but I’m also the chief of staff, the commander of the army.
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The United States and a number of other countries have been stressing that I have allegedly lost my legitimacy because I fled the country. Let me say again: I never fled anywhere.
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I would like you to warn that the economic situation in Ukraine is going to degenerate, and those who usurp the power are going to shift the blame for this economic crisis on my shoulders, and perhaps even on Russia. ..
And I would like to say: Glory to Ukraine, and I hope everything will be fine in my country.

If to cast aside spread by our opponents' nonsense, I’ll use chess-players phrase: we have sacrificed quantity to quality and showed such respect to our partners and readiness to properly account for their interests which others neither could or wished to reveal. (Speech by Prime Minister of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych at the International conference "Ukraine and European Union: new approaches") (28 February 2007)

In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia. We in the Clinton administration did not know much about him at the time — just that he had started his career in the K.G.B. I hoped the meeting would help me take the measure of the man and assess what his sudden elevation might mean for U.S.-Russia relations, which had deteriorated amid the war in Chechnya. Sitting across a small table from him in the Kremlin, I was immediately struck by the contrast between Mr. Putin and his bombastic predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Whereas Mr. Yeltsin had cajoled, blustered and flattered, Mr. Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my impressions. “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” He claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to fall but had not expected the whole Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.”

[On Putin] He just keeps talking. And throwing numbers out there. Most of them wrong. It's meant to create the impression that he knows what he's talking about. But it's also just meant to drown you in meaningless stuff.

Vladimir Vladimorovich: The Kremlin walls became your prison walls. You have already lost. You know it. That's why you are so afraid. You lost in spirit. The world is on Ukraine's side. The world is with the people of Ukraine.