graphic and disturbing video emerges showing the body of yemen's former president ali abdullah saleh he is understood to have been killed by ruby fighters after an alliance between them collapsed last week. president of mali contradicts the french account of an airstrike in northern mali in october saying the bombardment killed soldiers not. another retraction from a major us media outlet over coverage of the scandal surrounding the white house and team trump's alleged collusion with russia. i will go to r t dot com for more on that those stories and other headlines as well up next so if you go sits down with award winning director oliver stone's to.

welcome to sophie and. not say he won oscars and globes haste films are cult classics part of american consciousness now all over stones latest project was to film an extensive series of interviews with russia's vladimir putin. i caught up with the director himself to talk about the experience my over sounds great to have you with us today so if you're having a great trip in moscow yes just got here so your book competitor extensive interviews with is published by you called the good an interview for a day a day shows climax to my strange life as an american filmmaker climax your career is the best thing you've ever done. you know i have to take the point of view that it could be the last film too you never know time is seems more precious when

you get a little bit older and as a filmmaker it's a very young profession you know and very few and america especially it kind of goes fast you don't get off in another chance so i felt like this was a kind of a climax not that it's a feature film but that it's the most safe at this time in history the most forbidding character to american media to american and western europe to i think forbidding kind of. cross into that into another world i'm glad i got here i mean i did mr castro and i did mr chavez i did mr arafat's and also as a young who was a character when he was out of office back when he was out of office he's now in power forever it seems but these characters all led me to this moment with mr putin . and i frankly i enjoyed the meeting him i met him originally on the at

the one of my trips to russia because i was interviewing snowden a lot we were doing research with ed and a lot of the movies soden was represents what ed this point of view was so getting that information took time and we came back and we're trying to be accurate the last scene of the movie was shot in moscow so after a by one i met mr putin which is in the back room of a theater in moscow a play an old like hundred sixty s. play he was attending to promote folkloric culture. we met the back and i asked him about mr snowden and he gave me the russian version his version of what happened which was fascinating different than what we had been told in the public. papers and so forth but anyway long telling the story quickly is getting back to the end of the movie if snowden we shot in moscow to

a weekend with with ed and then we turned around a few days later we went to the kremlin and we shot mr putin over three days and. at that time we didn't know if this would go on it was simply you know take it as it comes like you're doing and play it by ear it was spontaneous i gave melissa quick questions i was areas that i was going to cover but it wasn't limited he didn't say it was totally spontaneous i didn't have any limitation on the way to us and as you can see by every day i look different he was always the same he looked very together i was sometimes. well here was blown in the way and. i guess i changed appearances several jobs but. in other words i'm the opposite of an american actor i don't look like megan kelly i will look like you even. that's a compliment. i know what kind of great effort it takes to get that kind of accent

but. that's not easy i mean a lot of russian journalism top journalists don't get that kind of access right and i know how much effort it took you to make this happen and make it come together and then the minute this comes out it was so talked about in russia and obviously the whole american press right away lashed out at you saying yourself flattering to that you're a bad entity or just want to do you care to get under under your skin because that's a lot of work you did with putting it was a lot of work but i didn't consider my i never said i was a journalist and i didn't pretend to be what i well that this is a book. a movie a film director you know me from the films and you may know me from some of the past interviews i did with the public figures but i'm not pretending to be anything else i know you said in response that you know you don't have an opinion about anything that you're doing that you're nurture all will the opinions of james because then i'm talking about the putin movie but at the same time i watched a series you said a lot of flattering things about you know couldn't do you feel like you managed to

stay objective and neutral. i don't buy it and i think if you see the movies i do it's not good but i try to stick to what i feel is the truth and i don't take i didn't say one false word to mr p. at all i did say what i meant when i said it when i said to him and one of the i think one of the first things i said was it strikes me that you're this you're a son of russia because when you came into the country at a time when it was just in the dumps it was one nine hundred ninety nine two thousand the place was a mass. the real economic story and what you did was you turned things around no one can take that away from you and i think that's one of the reasons he's still popular is that because he brought a sense of place destiny a sense that we we are russian we have much to be proud of we have a history and he really is certain the concept of a sovereign country which was crucial because russia was not

a sovereign country from approximately ninety one two to two thousand it was losing that sovereignty completely the united states was and other people were walking all over the place and basically monitoring whatever they want and they were all over the the nuclear certainly the nuclear industry but look the point is that putin gave russia something that is really important in this world and we can get back to that because that's the bottom line is we need an anchor in the world we need a resistance to exist to the call of the dominion of the united states i know that you know on talk about politics but this is a very happy type of question you have sighted people. who have done movies cost chavez putin i mean this are strongman you know obviously have attraction to strongman do you feel like this is diffused here of politics leaders like that they're very strong uncompromising. very controversial in many ways or should

politics be about dialogue and political correctness well it is about the long term and these men all were open to dialogue and you can argue who did who said what to who but the point was that castro tried to negotiate with the united states for a long time and he was rebuffed not only was your buff he was insulted in the they tried to assassinate him many times so you know where what is dialogue dialogue is important and mr chavez certainly had a point of view he was if you remember he shook obama's head and he really who is hoping that there was going to be a new approach from the united states didn't happen so it is about dialogue it's about compromise politics and above all if i. give you an overall opinion of mr putin he said he's the ultimate negotiator you wear you out he really believes in talking out everything there's no there are certain points of interest for every country has its national interests and he constantly hearts on this russia has its national interests and he's open to the gut to negotiating anything but those

national interests and when you cross the line. he will let you know as you know i pushed him whatever people say i pushed him and certainly i could feel his irritation when i was pushing him hard on the democracy question on the the question of his succession in what's going to happen next year there were times i riled him more than once but i am concerned and the reason i undertook the series was i was very concerned about going back to my relationship to russia what happened to the american russian relationship that had existed in two thousand if you like your film can change american perception on point because it hurts all some dolly it does to some degree i'll tell you more than several million people saw it which is and this is on a premium cable channel showtime is not on a national channel like in russia so you have a limited prescription audience that it was seen and seen again but it was also shown in europe in a lot of places and we had

a very good debate in france i was public television channel three in france and. uber vedra in the x. foreign minister of a mr beattie all defended the movie very well i thought against and several other people against the opposition it was the debate was very french but in other words in europe and germany france these things matter italy very important now whether things change as a result it's hard to tell because the recent leaders you know the united states congress which stuns me voted almost unanimously for sanctions to be expanded against russia. this happened recently so it seems to be almost a reaction to trump. as putin says the domestic politics doesn't feel like trump is trying to sort of way emulate leaders like putin behalf he is i'm not sure i can't tell you what is in donald trump's head i don't think anyone can and if they tell you that i don't think he's stupid i think he's

a very sharp guy and i'm sure he wrecks risp. next things he may miss understand mr putin too so i don't know but he certainly hasn't lived up to the idea that he gave many people during the campaign that he was against any form of the interventions that he thought the united states it squandered its resources in wars abroad so we there was his thinking that it would change but it hasn't changed not because of his willpower it that because he hasn't been able to get it to his been stuck in gridlock from the beginning opposition has been severe also because of russia now because no let's get rid of skewering really that has been the excuse of the he's been it shows you how frankly stupid the american you know the polling is off on it indicating that there's a bureaucracy he called it a bureaucracy in america they call it a deep state a bureaucracy that has been resistant to change certainly the policies towards russia have for the most part united states been highly negative since one of the

share a force. it's a. very dangerous cold war was that really a cold war in the name of fighting communism that you would like vietnam among others korea. you wonder how many people have died in the name of that cold war and you know millions of the third world people have been hurt after all over africa there was battles. and certainly in them we've seen now in the middle east we've seen enormous amount of damage. the specter of communism doesn't work anymore in the united states was not able to use danced for the expansion of russians actions

in their mind it's some form of the old russia talking to mr gorbachev was one of the most wonderful moments of my life it was of hope a new feeling. relative merican support in the context in which this book came out around and everyone's trying to put. and all didn't mention are going on it's always messy. but i guess you are confusing and not so clean us against them in fact i went to vietnam as a young man believing that we were fighting communism in other words there were a lot of disguises and when you look back at the whole history of that period as we tried to do an untold history the united states i would have to tell you that it's very clear that it was a farce that the united states really pulled the wool over the world's eyes and declaring and making its way after having won world war two they made them the fall guy for war two two and equate out of the this misunderstanding of war what that

first cold war was america has spent a fortune fighting this war and it's deprived its own people us the american people of better education better system more security health welfare all these things that are giving us problems now this social net that's disappearing could have come out of that instead of beans the the money being spent on the cold war so we paid a huge price for it and it never let up i remember in eighty nine there was talk of a peace dividend they talk of it what happened to the peace dividend a few weeks after the berlin wall fell mr bush sr was. going into iraq sending five hundred thousand troops to the middle east and i pointed out it was a big thing because we went when we said five hundred thousand troops to vietnam was actually under lyndon johnson that was a huge deal in the press made

a big big number out of that not not since world war two that we knew those numbers were too big we were fighting with too many men we don't it won't work it was too big and what happened we forgot about it reagan mr reagan and to forget the vietnam war and we were sending a half million. and again abroad to fight in the middle east we never got out of the middle east i made a movie about it called w in which dick cheney the dick cheney's character yeah policy says there is no exit and the truth is we haven't very sense of history one felt like through films. i guess some people would in my country where i was make fun of it you relatively has to go at least may have to go more socialistic in order to survive because if things fall apart and we continue to have crises after crises stock market explosions and so forth and meltdowns there has to be a right and they want no way to trump to change something but remember a mr obama song what was it seven hundred fifty billion dollars and where the

united states is going it's a very it's interesting i think i'm going to try stick around and see because i think that's a great question it sounds i mean just to be on the sidelines and see what happens it could get really ugly and be pretty nasty too in terms of casualties and of course united states i would skip i'm scares me in the sense that it might lose its self control and out of the sense of panic and fear attack. this concept that russia is responsible for everything isn't saying but it's very easy to to resort to that kind of nineteenth early one nine hundred fifty s. primitivism like a joe mccarthy i was told when i was a young boy the soviets are in our schools they're in our colleges they are there they're creeping into our system where the soviets are going to take us over without even a war that was i heard this from serious people. you know you have to allow that

this mentality exists and when you're around a vigilante mob that hangs people it's scary because you common sense goes out the window it's the first thing and decency and humanity you go out the window so it scares me that mentality in the you know a lot about politics you know politicians and you know something about scripts give me a scenario of how this should work out. their reality or you are see for a movie from my point of view from the american side it's not going to happen any other way and that's what's frightening because i don't see that russia can take any initiative at this point except for surrender would completely all your nuclear arms and have a regime change mr putin resigns which is insane to happen because the russian people support him now. no third parties do exist they come into being there's de gaulle's that come up right charles de gaulle you hope for a french leader or a european leader i was very disappointed in merkel throughout this whole process

because she knows better she knows the real story she doesn't fall for it because her foreign min a crane and but in other words there's has to be some kind of european mr to go i was around when mr goss said i don't think i am very proud man and proud for france . one hopes but the united states is a hard line on china doesn't say it like it does say it about russia but the reason that we're arming korea to the degree that we are and japan is truly against the chinese to encircle the chinese. but i worry about korea because we again have so much or so many arms we put into japan and korea. now your age i would like to live out the rest of my life you know what do you do what do you do you bringing attention to it that's the best you can do right now. to live you make movie about the certainties of because i did care and i want to i want i want peace to have

a chance and i think every time it just thirty hours i never sensed any other desire in his part but to have a balance of power and a sense of peace in the world here and that's what people don't accept from him they can't believe that this man who was they consider a villain is another stone thank you very much that was for me so heading into france to live with everything. persons instead of talking about what's next why stop you'll ban me from getting this close to the white house i'm with a group code pink one hundred because i'm trying to break me on the wheel but when

i long time that this sort of nonsense you don't scare me and i'll continue to voice my opinion i'll continue to speak out in good company i'm in good company you're going to be me you want to do this because we're free thinkers. concentration to be a tragic concentration is sapping the economic vitality from this entrepreneurial nation called america and the ghetto like people nodding out in the middle of the day in the middle of the street. urging a major u.s. census that have been conspicuous bravely coming forward and telling their stories so security here in the united states jointly signed and published.