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 tweet 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 nuclear retaliation.
The United States, rather than responding in kind, has...
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