On May 2, American film director Oliver Stone floated a conspiracy theory on Twitter, suggesting that the United States may be preparing a false-flag nuclear strike in Ukraine to blame Russia for killing thousands of Ukrainians.
Stone tweeted two screenshots with text and photographs, captioned: “My thoughts on some potential neocon objectives.”
Stone's was shared more than 15,000 times by May 5:
“I wonder if the U.S. is setting a stage of a low-yield nuclear explosion, of unknown origin, somewhere in the Donbass region, killing thousands of Ukrainians. Of course… to blame Russia… regardless who launched the device.”
Stone’s conjecture is misleading and unsubstantiated.
He sidesteps a key U.S. point – that use of a nuclear weapon could lead to a dangerous escalation with devastating consequences, not just for the region but for the world.
And Stone overlooks the fact that it’s Russia, not the United States, that has made threats to go nuclear, ratcheting up tensions.
On February 27, just three days after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin ordered his defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, to raise Russia’s nuclear posture to “high alert.”
Putin has warned that any nation that tried to help Ukraine would face consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history,” taken by many to mean .
The United States, rather than responding in kind, has taken and nuclear weapons talk.
The U.S. could have raised its own nuclear defense posture, as France did after Putin’s warning. But , with a senior defense official telling journalists at the Pentagon, “[W]e remained comfortable and confident in our own strategic deterrence posture.”
Moreover, on March 3, the U.S. canceled some routine nuclear missile tests that had been planned at least three years in advance, a decision made precisely to avoid sending an escalatory message to Moscow.
Pentagon spokesman that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made the decision “in an effort to demonstrate that we have no intention in engaging in any actions that can be misunderstood or misconstrued.”
In addition, no foreign false-flag operation, nuclear or otherwise, is needed to accuse Russia of killing Ukrainians. According to the United Nations High Commissioner’s office, in just three months, Russia’s war already has killed 6,546 people. The , the U.N. regularly reminds readers of its reports.
Russian troops in Ukraine have left behind of civilians and Ukraine defenders, dead bodies on the streets, victims of , with many killed and violent treatment.
Stone’s claim that the U.S. might attempt to portray Russia as “Satan” by detonating a nuclear attack is ironic, given that the West nicknamed Russia’s “Sarmat” nuclear missile system the On April 21, Russia t a new Sarmat missile, RS-28, that can carry 10 or more independently targeted nuclear warheads and uses a hypersonic delivery system.
In announcing the original model of the Sarmat back in 2018, Putin bragged about the rocket’s “unique” capabilities by using the .
Nuclear sable-rattling is not new in Russia. State-owned TV regularly uses demonstrating how many seconds it would take for a Russian missile to hit each of Europe’s capitals.
Russian TV recently aired a simulation of how . could wipe the countries off the map.
On a TV program this past week, how easy it would be for Russia to turn London into radioactive ash – in a matter of seconds, they claimed.
Stone’s nuclear conspiracy post came a few days after Russian Foreign Minister claimed that the West was spreading panic by engaging in nuclear war rhetoric. At the same time, though, Lavrov warned that the West should “not underestimate the threat of nuclear war.”
There are other peculiar coincidences in Stone’s Twitter feed. For instance, in a on April 14, he denied that , a suburb of the capital Kyiv, and accused Ukrainians of staging atrocities and killing their own relatives.
The Kremlin, Russia’s defense and foreign ministries and himself made .
A longtime supporter of Russia, Stone criticized Putin after the invasion, writing in a Facebook post in March: “Although the United States has many wars of aggression on its conscience, it doesn’t justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. Russia was wrong to invade.”
Still, he described Putin as a victim of a plot by the West:
“Putin has allowed himself to be baited and fallen into the trap set by the U.S. and has committed his military, empowering the worst conclusions the West can make,” the news outlet , quoting Stone's Facebook page.