David Farnor | On 13, Jun 2017

Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews are available to watch online in the UK throughout this week, as Sky simulcasts the interviews over four days.

The Oscar–winning director and screenwriter of Platoon and Wall Street has over the past two years been granted unprecedented access to both the professional and personal worlds of the Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In Stone’s own words, “if Vladimir Putin is indeed the great enemy of the United States, then at least we should try to understand him”.

Stone, with the help of his longtime documentary producer Fernando Sulichin, interviewed the Russian leader more than a dozen times, most recently in February following the US presidential elections. Since first becoming the president of Russia in 2000, Putin has never before spoken at such length or in such detail to a Western interviewer, leaving no topic off limits. In scope and depth, The Putin Interviews recalls The Nixon Interviews, the series of conversations between David Frost and Richard Nixon that aired in the spring of 1977, 40 years ago.

During these wide-ranging discussions, Putin confronts the controversies engulfing the increasingly fragile relations between the US and Russia today, including his views on President Donald Trump and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, NATO, and fostering turmoil in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Prodded by Stone, Putin traverses a host of critical topics in sharp detail, including Putin’s rise to the Presidency and long-term grip on power, and his personal relationships with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump – as well as Yeltsin and Gorbachev. He also talks of the legacies of Stalin and Reagan, as well as the surveillance state and Edward Snowden’s flight to asylum in Moscow, and the resignation of US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The sessions were held throughout the Kremlin, Sochi and Putin’s official residence outside of Moscow, resulting in four hours of footage that premiere this week from Tuesday 13th June to Friday 16th June. While they air on Showtime in the USA, Sky Atlantic will be screening the conversations in the UK, with each hour-long instalment available to watch at the same time as the US broadcast at 2am. After their broadcast, they are then available to stream on-demand.

Don’t have Sky? You can always stream them live and on-demand on NOW, as part of a £7.99 monthly subscription.

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