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davetheshady · 7 years ago

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It Devours! liveblog 3

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Chapters 16-20!

Despite her personal turmoil and cognitive long jumps, Nils knows exactly who to turn to for guidance:

HELO <3 <3 <3

Everyone’s favorite anonymous surveillance helicopter pilot* is a veritable font of wisdom and insight and indeed, has seen some weird shit out in the desert.

* well, mine, anyway

hahaha

Helo knows actual stuff about science and also wants to help! But you just can’t share surveillance with anyone! But they spend all their time in a helicopter and their boyfriend Nate just broke up with them (HOW COULD HE) and that makes life hard!

sorry darryl, NILS/HELO 5EVA

Helo ~breaks their programming~ and sends Nils a scavenged surveillance video of... sand worms something?? It’s enough to egg on Nils’ suspicions, though, so she resolves to sneak into City Hall and see if she can find more concrete proof, or at least the same vague proof with a higher resolution.

She cunningly infiltrates City Hall by asking directions to the bathroom. Naturally, this is as terrifying as everything else in Night Vale.

She lasts WAY longer than I would without whipping out her cell phone flashlight.

(If City Hall is this bad, what on earth is the Night Vale DMV like? Unless it’s like a TOTAL reversal where it’s efficiently run and staffed with very pleasant people.)

so did i.

Things are going pretty well, until she runs into your standard interfering civil servant.

NOOOOOPE

Fortunately, she is saved by Pamela Winchell! Unfortunately, she is also arrested by Pamela Winchell.

that’s deep man.

and so is the pit that opens up under the ralphs’ dairy section D: D: D:

Meanwhile, Darryl’s back at JoyCon, reminiscing about their cute-yet-creepy (def his aesthetic) equivalent of Sunday school.

Gordo(n), who is just plain creepy, fetches Darryl to come talk to the elusive Pastor Munn. It quickly becomes clear that despite Night Vale’s status as a panopticon surveillance state, the church hierarchy has not been paying very much attention to Darryl, like, at all. Otherwise they’d know that Darryl loves his place in the community, and through that absorbed his faith.

(disagree, the author is dead.)

He’s not questioning his faith in that he doubts what he’s been told – he just has questions, in general, inspired by Nils. (Which, incidentally, is pretty key to a healthy religion. It’s why theological studies are a thing and there are religious scholars everywhere.)

oooh baby do you know what that’s worth

Darryl wants to skim through Munn’s book collection, but honestly he’d be TOTALLY COOL if Munn and Gordo(n) would just talk to him.

Of course, they’re a creepy cult who operates by restricting information, so that wouldn’t work.

I hate to tell you, Pastor Munn, but all he had to do was turn on the radio at any point in the past five years.

Which brings me to an issue I’ve been having: we have no idea what our heroes know. Year 2 was ALL ABOUT the old oak doors and the desert otherworld and the worship of the Smiling God, covered both by Cecil AND Kevin, who even broadcast to both Desert Bluffs and Night Vale. Carlos’ scientists were on the run from Strex Corp! Carlos had a giant anti-Smiling God umbrella and that kids is how I met your mother! The universe almost uncoiled! Steve Carlsberg hulk-smashed the prophet Kevin into the Smiling God’s face live on radio!

But Nils and Darryl don’t seem to remember any of this and I have NO idea why? Like, there are multiple ways you could handwave this – Nils wasn’t paying attention to Cecil before Carlos ended up in the desert otherworld, and then was too busy being on the run; Darryl was in Desert Bluffs and has only heard approved propaganda; the light of the universe’s coils unwinding messed with everyone’s memories – but, like, you have to pick one! Your readers can’t do all the work for you! It’s fine to not want the story to depend on having listened to the podcast, but it shouldn’t ACTIVELY MAKE THE STORY MORE CONFUSING if you have.

Anyway, all of JoyCon’s intimidation tactics have misfired, because Darryl IMMEDIATELY seeks out his friends and asks for their help to find out what’s wrong.

when all you have is a hammer...

Meanwhile, Nils has survived her night in the slammer and gets a ride home:

It’s Them!

She’s met by Carlos, who is both concerned and bearing her favorite ice cream. What a good. He wants Nils to stop investigating, because it’s putting her in danger.

They’re both right! And they’re both kind of wrong! And because of that they respect each other’s opinions even if they don’t agree! And since Nils is going to continue investigating Carlos is going to support her! And they’re both so cute! The even, I cannot.

Since JoyCon is all about devouring, Nils starts thinking about what, exactly, might be doing the nomming.

1) ALL HAIL

2) the Glow Cloud would NEVER, how DARE you

But then we take a couple paragraphs to go on some dreadfully misinformed tangents about religions uuuuUUUUUuuuugh

Like, science your way into a religious studies class, geez. There’s a LOT to talk about how various religions have restricted information to control their followers (as indeed basically every human organization has done at one point or another, and like, once a week in Night Vale), but science is just yet another lump of information that might get suppressed; there’s not really a special animosity, there. And meanwhile, the religions that do support science don’t necessarily see it as separate, because once you’ve equated the deity of your choice with creation, that includes all the parts that can be explained empirically and the explaining itself.

Also? Religion generally isn’t about stuff you don’t understand. Religion is all about understanding; it’s just understanding stuff that can’t necessarily be proved.

c.f. Pumbaa (1994)

Anyways, back to Nils and Carlos being cute:

heee

AWWWW

Nils tries to gather more information on JoyCon, but her only source is Leann Hart’s, err, rather sensationalist book:

::cough::

Also, I feel it’s important to know that Night Vale’s scientists are clearly producing some quality content:

I think we all know who that ‘almost’ is.

Nils finally gets to the awkward post-date texting, with the added bonus of determining whether or not her date might be trying to destroy Night Vale. Ah, romance.

She decides to invite Darryl over, then immediately regrets it because like many people capslocking all over the internet he has no idea what a theory actually is.

haha SERIOUSLY. You can tell Nils is a good person because she didn’t murder him right there.

Anyway, they then have a much more productive conversation in terms of determining whether or not they are inimically opposed to each other, although they’re not any closer to solving philosophical conundrums.

Meanwhile in the Discworld:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

-- Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

This is a great turning point for both of them: Darryl has to put people above his faith when people are what caused him to believe in the first place, and Nilanjana has to put faith in Darryl, which can’t be explained empirically any more than religion can.

And it doubles as a booty call. What multitasking.

#Welcome to Night Vale #wtnv #it devours!#it liveblogs!

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reneeacaseyfl · 5 years ago

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Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet

When Oliver Stone announced at the end of June that he would be premiering a new documentary, Revealing Ukraine, at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, not many people noticed. That’s not itself so surprising given his slide over recent years from producing acclaimed Hollywood blockbusters into bootlicking hagiographies of dictators with axes to grind against the United States. The only media that did take an interest was controlled by either the Russian government or a certain Ukrainian businessman.

The trailer for Revealing Ukraine is a mess. Half-finished lines of dialogue are cut with sinister, dramatic music as if they are of great importance when they often seem to be cut from the middle of phrases, leaving them incomprehensible. The promotional material on the film’s website is exceptionally embarrassing, with grating Ringlish abundant:

In the move the main speaker—heavyweight Ukrainian politician, opposition leader—Viktor Medvedchuk is being interviewed by the filmmaker Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone also sit with Russian president Vladimir Putin to ask him a questions about Ukrainian crisis.

The re-use of so many elements from Stone’s previous documentary, Ukraine on Fire, screams of a bargain-bin production. In fact the promotional poster for Revealing Ukraine even uses the exact same photo of Stone from that of Ukraine on Fire—and in the same position no less.

Stone’s opening line in the trailer is: “Good morning Mr Medvedchuk, I’m Oliver Stone.”

Viktor Medvedchuk has remained an ominous figure in Ukrainian politics, despite a period lying low after the 2014 Maidan revolution, during which his office was raided by activists who discovered, inter alia, a portrait of the man often dubbed Ukraine’s prince of darkness in full, Napoleonic-era imperial military regalia.

Medvedchuk’s reputation dates back to 1980 when, just before the Olympic Games were due to be held in Moscow, the Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus was arrested for “anti-Soviet activity” and the young lawyer was appointed his state defense attorney, against Stus’s own requests. During his closing speech at the trial, Medvedchuk denounced his client and said that all of Stus’s “crimes” deserved punishment and further claimed that his serious health problems did not affect his ability to work. Stus was sentenced to 10 years of forced labor in the notorious Perm-36 Gulag camp where he died, while on hunger strike, in 1985. Notably, Medvedchuk also defended Viktor Bryukhanov, director of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, during the 1987 trial that served as the climax of HBO’s recent television series.

Having entered business and politics in the ‘90s, Medvedchuk made a fortune, estimated by various sources as between 270 and 800 million U.S. dollars. In 2002, he was appointed head of Kuchma’s presidential administration—this in spite of his known criminal record for violently assaulting a student while a member of the volunteer Druzhina militia in the 1960s, and accusations of having been an agent of the KGB, operating under the codename ‘Sokolovsky.’ Leaked tape recordings of conversations between Kuchma and the heads of the Ukrainian Security Service and Interior Ministry confirm that Kuchma was made aware of these reports, but considered Medvedchuk’s influence too great to dislodge him.

In 2004, as future president Viktor Yushchenko was campaigning against Kuchma’s intended successor Viktor Yanukovych, Medvedchuk was accused of orchestrating a rally for an openly neo-Nazi “virtual party,” the Ukrainian National Assembly, during which the party leader Eduard Kovalenko declared his support for Yushchenko. Notably Kovalenko reappeared in 2017, this time as an ostensibly pro-Russian activist, a strange turn for supposed Ukrainian nationalist.

After the 2004 Orange Revolution which saw Yushchenko defeat Yanukovych, Medvedchuk founded the amorphous Ukrainian Choice organization, which funded everything from political candidates to holiday camps across the country. Ukrainian Choice was an ideologically flexible outfit, utilizing language of both the left and the right, but their propaganda generally stuck to anti-European and pro-Russian lines. Some of this veered directly into the far-right, such as an article published on the organization’s website that espoused the classic tropes of Soviet-era anti-Semitism, claiming that prominent politicians opposing Viktor Yanukovych during the Maidan protests all had “secret Jewish surnames.” Ukrainian Choice also played upon homophobic attitudes by campaigning against the Association Agreement with the European Union with billboards declaring that the deal would lead to gay marriage.

Medvedchuk’s relationship with the Russian state is close, to say the least. Vladimir Putin is godfather to his daughter, Darya, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wife Svetlana is her godmother. When Putin addressed the annual Kremlin-organized showpiece conference in Valdai in 2016, Medvedchuk was seated front and center in the audience, next to the Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

When the U.S. imposed sanctions in March 2014, after Russian troops occupied the Crimean peninsula, Medvedchuk was on the list, highlighted for:

…threatening the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine, and for undermining Ukraine’s democratic institutions and processes. He is also being designated because he has materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to Yanukovych.

But following the outbreak of war between Russia’s thinly disguised forces and Ukraine in the east of the country months later, Medvedchuk emerged as a key player in prisoner exchanges, with Putin negotiating directly with him rather than the Ukrainian government itself. In connection with this, he received a seat on the Minsk peace talk team, led by his former boss Kuchma. Medvedchuk was most notably central to the release of Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian officer and former pilot who was captured in 2014 and finally released following a long hunger strike and trumped-up conviction for murder in 2016. Savchenko herself returned a hero but soon became more erratic and was transformed into a pariah after making anti-Semitic statements and holding unauthorized meetings with Russia-backed separatists across the front line. In 2018, she was arrested and charged with plotting an armed coup d’état.

“Another interesting Western connection of Medvedchuk’s emerged in 2017, when Reuters was told by officials familiar with the FBI investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign team and Russia that Medvedchuk was one of those contacts.”

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Yuriy Lutsenko, said that he suspected Medvedchuk of involvement in the alleged plot. Nothing came of this aspect of the investigation and Savchenko has still yet to face trial, though was recently released and allowed to return to parliament in April this year. In March, Lutsenko announced that he had opened a criminal case against Medvedchuk and another pro-Russian politician, Yuriy Boyko, for illegally traveling to Moscow to meet with government officials.

In spite of all his public censure, Medvedchuk has leveraged this position to stage something of a comeback over the last year, worming his way back into front-line politics as leader of the “For Life” party which, following a schism in the Opposition Bloc, made up of former members of Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, has now formed an umbrella alliance of pro-Russian MPs with 27 seats in the current parliament.

He has also gone on a spree buying up media outlets, taking control of them either directly or via loyal associates. In the last 18 months he has taken over the 112, Zik and NewsOne television channels, swiftly changing their output to his favor, with rumors of moves on at least two other major broadcasters in the works.

Ihor Krymov, a broadcast editor at Zik, told the independent Hromadske TV channel that channel bosses had banned coverage of protests against the registration of pro-Russian candidates for upcoming parliamentary elections as they were “not interesting.” Krymov defied the order and relayed Hromadske’s own coverage of the protest on the channel. He has since been taken off air.

While the Ukrainian government and several other parties in parliament have roundly condemned Medvedchuk’s growing influence on the media, some Western politicians have ridden to his aid, most notably members of the UK Independence Party, which has often sided with Russia in international affairs. Another interesting Western connection of Medvedchuk’s emerged in 2017, when Reuters was told by officials familiar with the FBI investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign team and Russia that Medvedchuk was one of those contacts, something Medvedchuk himself denies.

So is Medvedchuk’s star role in Stone’s new film simply a reflection of his rising prominence or is it his own PR vehicle?

The fact that his wife, a former X Factor Ukraine presenter with a suspicious history of Russian business connections herself, Oksana Marchenko, receives title billing as a “journalist” certainly indicates the latter. Indeed 112 and NewsOne have been running indulgent reports on the lavish festival, broadcasting footage of Medvedchuk and Marchenko ostentatiously delivering a bouquet of flowers to Nicole Kidman, and attending a soiree with Stone and Domenico Dolce, whose garments Viktor apparently wears exclusively, and who considers him a “friend.”

Apart from the Medvedchuk family and President Putin, the other names attached to this film are pretty low-grade. Director Igor Lopatonok (Stone is the star and executive producer but was not behind the camera for this venture) has little to his name than his previous work on Ukraine on Fire, several colorized remasters of Soviet-era films and a quantity of real-estate videos. Lopatonok demonstrated either spectacular ignorance or mendacity regarding one of his subjects when he recently claimed on Facebook that Putin was never an agent of the KGB, something the Russian president has often publicly reminisced about.

The other “stars” listed on the film’s IMDB page are Ivan Katchanovski, an academic promoting conspiracy theories claiming that the protesters shot dead on the Maidan in 2014 were the victims of a “false flag” operation, and Lee Stranahan, an American host on the Russian state-owned Radio Sputnik and former Breitbart journalist. Stranahan was profiled in a 2016 New York Times piece for his role in spreading racially charged misinformation around the yogurt company Chobani in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Revealing Ukraine will receive its public premiere on Medvechuk’s 112 channel on July 13, with Russian state media already highlighting choice, if rather boring, lines from Stone’s interview with Putin. At Taormina, the film received the Best Documentary prize, despite the presence of Stone on the festival’s feature film competition jury. This whole affair looks sordid for Stone, who has for some time gone out of his way to bat for any regime as long as they are an opponent of the United States, but had hitherto refrained from quite so obviously doing the bidding of a private businessman.

Credit: Source link

The post Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/oliver-stones-latest-piece-of-pro-putin-propaganda-may-be-his-most-shameless-move-yet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=oliver-stones-latest-piece-of-pro-putin-propaganda-may-be-his-most-shameless-move-yet from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186278442707

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velmaemyers88 · 5 years ago

Text

Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet

Stone’s opening line in the trailer is: “Good morning Mr Medvedchuk, I’m Oliver Stone.”

When the U.S. imposed sanctions in March 2014, after Russian troops occupied the Crimean peninsula, Medvedchuk was on the list, highlighted for:

So is Medvedchuk’s star role in Stone’s new film simply a reflection of his rising prominence or is it his own PR vehicle?

Credit: Source link

The post Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

weeklyreviewer · 5 years ago

Text

Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet

Stone’s opening line in the trailer is: “Good morning Mr Medvedchuk, I’m Oliver Stone.”

When the U.S. imposed sanctions in March 2014, after Russian troops occupied the Crimean peninsula, Medvedchuk was on the list, highlighted for:

So is Medvedchuk’s star role in Stone’s new film simply a reflection of his rising prominence or is it his own PR vehicle?

Credit: Source link

The post Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

courtneytincher · 5 years ago

Text

Oliver Stone’s Latest Piece of Pro-Putin Propaganda May Be His Most Shameless Move Yet

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty / RevealingUkraine.comWhen Oliver Stone announced at the end of June that he would be premiering a new documentary, Revealing Ukraine, at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, not many people noticed. That’s not itself so surprising given his slide over recent years from producing acclaimed Hollywood blockbusters into bootlicking hagiographies of dictators with axes to grind against the United States. The only media that did take an interest was controlled by either the Russian government or a certain Ukrainian businessman.The trailer for Revealing Ukraine is a mess. Half-finished lines of dialogue are cut with sinister, dramatic music as if they are of great importance when they often seem to be cut from the middle of phrases, leaving them incomprehensible. The promotional material on the film’s website is exceptionally embarrassing, with grating Ringlish abundant:In the move the main speaker—heavyweight Ukrainian politician, opposition leader—Viktor Medvedchuk is being interviewed by the filmmaker Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone also sit with Russian president Vladimir Putin to ask him a questions about Ukrainian crisis.The re-use of so many elements from Stone’s previous documentary, Ukraine on Fire, screams of a bargain-bin production. In fact the promotional poster for Revealing Ukraine even uses the exact same photo of Stone from that of Ukraine on Fire—and in the same position no less.Stone’s opening line in the trailer is: “Good morning Mr Medvedchuk, I’m Oliver Stone.”Viktor Medvedchuk has remained an ominous figure in Ukrainian politics, despite a period lying low after the 2014 Maidan revolution, during which his office was raided by activists who discovered, inter alia, a portrait of the man, often dubbed Ukraine’s prince of darkness, in full, Napoleonic-era imperial military regalia.‘The Putin Interviews’: Oliver Stone’s Wildly Irresponsible Love Letter to Vladimir PutinStephen Colbert Grills Oliver Stone Over Putin: ‘An Oppressive Leader of His Country’Medvedchuk’s reputation dates back to 1980 when, just before the Olympic Games were due to be held in Moscow, the Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus was arrested for “anti-Soviet activity” and the young lawyer was appointed his state defense attorney, against Stus’s own requests. During his closing speech at the trial, Medvedchuk denounced his client and said that all of Stus’s “crimes” deserved punishment and further claimed that his serious health problems did not affect his ability to work. Stus was sentenced to 10 years of forced labor in the notorious Perm-36 Gulag camp where he died, while on hunger strike, in 1985. Notably, Medvedchuk also defended Viktor Bryukhanov, director of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, during the 1987 trial that served as the climax of HBO’s recent television series.Having entered business and politics in the ‘90s, Medvedchuk made a fortune, estimated by various sources as between $270-800 million U.S. dollars. In 2002, he was appointed head of Kuchma’s presidential administration—this in spite of his known criminal record for violently assaulting a student while a member of the volunteer Druzhina militia in the 1960s, and accusations of having been an agent of the KGB, operating under the codename ‘Sokolovsky.’ Leaked tape recordings of conversations between Kuchma and the heads of the Ukrainian Security Service and Interior Ministry confirm that Kuchma was made aware of these reports, but considered Medvedchuk’s influence too great to dislodge him.In 2004, as future President Viktor Yushchenko was campaigning against Kuchma’s intended successor Viktor Yanykovych, Medvedchuk was accused of orchestrating a rally for an openly neo-Nazi “virtual party,” the Ukrainian National Assembly, during which the party leader Eduard Kovalenko declared his support for Yushchenko. Notably Kovalenko reappeared in 2017, this time as an ostensibly pro-Russian activist, a strange turn for supposed Ukrainian nationalist.After the 2004 Orange Revolution which saw Yushchenko defeat Yanukovych, Medvedchuk founded the amorphous Ukrainian Choice organization, which funded everything from political candidates to holiday camps across the country. Ukrainian Choice was an ideologically flexible outfit, utilizing language of both the left and the right, but their propaganda generally stuck to anti-European and pro-Russian lines. Some of this veered directly into the far-right, such as an article published on the organization’s website that espoused the classic tropes of Soviet-era anti-Semitism, claiming that prominent politicians opposing Viktor Yanukovych during the Maidan protests all had “secret Jewish surnames.” Ukrainian Choice also played upon homophobic attitudes by campaigning against the Association Agreement with the European Union with billboards declaring that the deal would lead to gay marriage.Medvedchuk’s relationship with the Russian state is close, to say the least. Vladimir Putin is godfather to his daughter, Darya, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wife Svetlana is her godmother. When Putin addressed the annual Kremlin-organized showpiece conference in Valdai in 2016, Medvedchuk was seated front and center in the audience, next to the Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov.When the U.S. imposed sanctions in March 2014, after Russian troops occupied the Crimean peninsula, Medvedchuk was on the list, highlighted for:...threatening the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine, and for undermining Ukraine’s democratic institutions and processes. He is also being designated because he has materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to Yanukovych.But following the outbreak of war between Russia’s thinly-disguised forces and Ukraine in the east of the country months later, Medvedchuk emerged as a key player in prisoner exchanges, with Putin negotiating directly with him rather than the Ukrainian government itself. In connection with this, he received a seat on the Minsk peace talk team, led by his former boss Kuchma. Medvedchuk was most notably central to the release of Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian officer and former pilot who was captured in 2014 and finally released following a long hunger strike and trumped-up conviction for murder in 2016. Savchenko herself returned a hero but soon became more erratic and was transformed into a pariah after making anti-Semitic statements and holding unauthorized meetings with Russia-backed separatists across the front line. In 2018, she was arrested and charged with plotting an armed coup d’état. Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Yuriy Lutsenko, said that he suspected Medvedchuk of involvement in the alleged plot. Nothing came of this aspect of the investigation and Savchenko has still yet to face trial, though was recently released and allowed to return to parliament in April this year. In March, Lutsenko announced that he had opened a criminal case against Medvedchuk and another pro-Russian politician, Yuriy Boyko, for illegally traveling to Moscow to meet with government officials. In spite of all his public censure, Medvedchuk has leveraged this position to stage something of a comeback over the last year, worming his way back into front-line politics as leader of the “For Life” party which, following a schism in the Opposition Bloc, made up of former members of Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, has now formed an umbrella alliance of pro-Russian MPs with 27 seats in the current parliament.He has also gone on a spree buying up media outlets, taking control of them either directly or via loyal associates. In the last 18 months he has taken over the 112, Zik and NewsOne television channels, swiftly changing their output to his favor, with rumors of moves on at least two other major broadcasters in the works.Ihor Krymov, a broadcast editor at Zik, told the independent Hromadske TV channel that channel bosses had banned coverage of protests against the registration of pro-Russian candidates for upcoming parliamentary elections as they were “not interesting.” Krymov defied the order and relayed Hromadske’s own coverage of the protest on the channel. He has since been taken off air.While the Ukrainian government and several other parties in parliament have roundly condemned Medvedchuk’s growing influence on the media, some Western politicians have ridden to his aid, most notably members of the UK Independence Party, which has often sided with Russia in international affairs. Another interesting Western connection of Medvedchuk’s emerged in 2017, when Reuters was told by officials familiar with the FBI investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign team and Russia that Medvedchuk was one of those contacts, something Medvedchuk himself denies.Vladimir Putin and Viktor MedvedchukGettySo is Medvedchuk’s star role in Stone’s new film simply a reflection of his rising prominence or is it his own PR vehicle? The fact that his wife, a former X Factor Ukraine presenter with a suspicious history of Russian business connections herself, Oksana Marchenko, receives title billing as a “journalist” certainly indicates the latter. Indeed 112 and NewsOne have been running indulgent reports on the lavish festival, broadcasting footage of Medvedchuk and Marchenko ostentatiously delivering a bouquet of flowers to Nicole Kidman, and attending a soiree with Stone and Domenico Dolce, whose garments Viktor apparently wears exclusively, and who considers him a “friend.”Apart from the Medvedchuk family and President Putin, the other names attached to this film are pretty low-grade. Director Igor Lopatonok (Stone is the star and executive producer but was not behind the camera for this venture) has little to his name than his previous work on Ukraine on Fire, several colorized remasters of Soviet-era films and a quantity of real-estate videos. Lopatonok demonstrated either spectacular ignorance or mendacity regarding one of his subjects when he recently claimed on Facebook that Putin was never an agent of the KGB, something the Russian president has often publicly reminisced about.The other “stars” listed on the film’s IMDB page are Ivan Katchanovski, an academic promoting conspiracy theories claiming that the protesters shot dead on the Maidan in 2014 were the victims of a “false flag” operation, and Lee Stranahan, an American host on the Russian state-owned Radio Sputnik and former Breitbart journalist. Stranahan was profiled in a 2016 New York Times piece for his role in spreading racially-charged misinformation around the yogurt company Chobani in Twin Falls, Idaho.Revealing Ukraine will receive its public premiere on Medvechuk’s 112 channel on July 13, with Russian state media already highlighting choice, if rather boring lines from Stone’s interview with Putin. At Taormina, the film received the Best Documentary prize, despite the presence of Stone on the festival’s feature film competition jury. This whole affair looks sordid for Stone, who has for some time gone out of his way to bat for any regime as long as they are an opponent of the United States, but had hitherto refrained from quite so obviously doing the bidding of a private businessman.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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