Plot Synopsis

THE PUTIN INTERVIEWS is a four-night event series that features conversations between filmmaker Oliver Stone and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Granted unprecedented access to both Putin's professional and personal worlds, Stone, with the help of his longtime documentary producer Fernando Sulichin, interviewed the Russian leader more than a dozen times over the course of two years, most recently in February 2017 following the U.S. 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. During these wide-ranging interviews, Putin confronts the controversies engulfing the increasingly fragile relations between the U.S. and Russia today, including his views on President Donald Trump and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, NATO, and fostering turmoil in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. Prodded by Stone, Putin traverses a host of critical topics, including Putin's rise to the Presidency, and long-term grip on power, 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 U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Providing intimate insight via sessions held throughout the Kremlin, Sochi and Putin's official residence outside of Moscow, the four-hour series captures the essence and complexity of the Russian leader and his approach to the U.S. and the world, while incorporating dramatic footage of key events. The exchanges are often pointed, always thought-provoking and occasionally surreal -- including a remarkable sequence where Stone introduces Putin for the first time to Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire DR. STRANGELOVE, which they watched together -- all serving to illuminate the mindset of one of the least understood but most important players in the geopolitical world today.
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On Thursday, June 15, 2017 at 9pm ET/PT, Showtime premiered the finale of THE PUTIN INTERVIEWS, immediately followed by an encore presentation (6-9pm) of the first three episodes.