(AFP Photo / Rafa Rivas)
The armed coup in Kiev is painfully similar to CIA operations to oust unwanted foreign leaders in Iran, Chile and Venezuela, said US filmmaker Oliver Stone after interviewing Ukraine's ousted president for a documentary.
Stone spent four hours in Moscow talking to Viktor Yanukovich, who was deposed from power during the February 2014 coup, the filmmaker wrote on his Facebook page.
The filmmaker added that the events in Kiev, which led to collapse of the Ukrainian government and imposition of a new one hostile towards Russia, were similar to those in other countries, which he called "America's soft power technique called 'Regime Change 101'."
Historically those were CIA-perpetrated coups against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 - both leaders with policies undesired by Washington or its allies.
More recently there was the 2002 coup in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez was briefly deposed,
Stone's critical assessment of the Ukrainian crisis provoked a storm of comments from pro-Ukrainian Facebook users, who accused him of taking embezzled money from Yanukovich, spreading Kremlin propaganda, simply being an idiot and a variety of other sins.
In addition to the documentary about the Ukrainian coup, Stone is currently working on a film about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia after exposing the practice of mass electronic surveillance by the US and its allies.
Snowden became stranded in transit at a Moscow airport as his passport was revoked and he couldn't continue his journey to Latin America.
The US wants to try him for his actions, but for many human rights activists and privacy advocates he is a heroic hero, who is being persecuted for revealing a government's dirty secrets.
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