Igor Lopatonok* in an exclusive interview with Panagiotis Pavlos, on the 3 years of war in Ukraine and the 80 years anniversary since the end of World War II
* Who is Igor Lopatonok
Igor Lopatonok is a distinguished American filmmaker, director, and producer celebrated for his innovative contributions to cinema and his compelling storytelling. Born on January 4, 1968, in Marganets, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), Lopatonok’s journey to becoming a prominent figure in the film industry is marked by an impressive blend of technical expertise and creative vision. Holding citizenship of Ukraine, United States and Russia, he brings a unique global perspective to his work, seamlessly bridging cultures and narratives.
Lopatonok’s early life showcased his intellectual prowess; at just 16, he began studying rocket science at Dnipropetrovsk National University in Ukraine. He later pursued International Finance at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations, laying a strong foundation in analytical thinking that would later inform his filmmaking career. Before entering the world of cinema, he enjoyed success in the investment and legal sectors, but his passion for storytelling eventually led him to the movie business in 2005.
A pioneer in cutting-edge film technologies, Lopatonok made his mark by restoring and colorizing classic Soviet films such as *Only Old Men Are Going Into Battle* and *Volga-Volga*, breathing new life into these cinematic treasures. His technical ingenuity extended to 3D conversion, with standout projects like *The Nutcracker in 3D* (2010), directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Elle Fanning, showcasing his ability to enhance storytelling through visual innovation.
Among his most significant achievements is the documentary *Ukraine on Fire* (2016), directed by Lopatonok and produced by Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone. This powerful film explores the complex political history of Ukraine leading up to the 2014 Maidan Uprising, offering a thought-provoking perspective on global events. Praised for its bold narrative and meticulous research, *Ukraine on Fire* stands out as a career-defining project, cementing Lopatonok’s reputation as a filmmaker unafraid to tackle challenging subjects. His collaboration with Stone continued with works like *Revealing Ukraine* (2019) and *Qazaq: History of the Golden Man* (2021), further highlighting his skill in crafting impactful documentaries. As well as on “Snowden” where Igor was one of executive producers.
Lopatonok’s versatility shines through in his diverse portfolio, which spans feature films, documentaries, and animation. His 2011 drama *Land of Oblivion*, starring Olga Kurylenko, earned acclaim at over 20 international film festivals, including Venice and Toronto, demonstrating his ability to captivate audiences with emotional depth. A member of esteemed organizations like the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the Association of Producers in Ukraine, Lopatonok remains a respected voice in the industry.
With a career defined by creativity, technical mastery, and a commitment to meaningful storytelling, Igor Lopatonok continues to inspire and entertain, leaving an indelible mark on modern cinema. His work, particularly *Ukraine on Fire*, stands as a testament to his talent and dedication, ensuring his legacy as a visionary filmmaker.
Latest Igor’s work is the documentary series “All the President’s Men: Conspiracy against Trump” gained a lot of attention and is distributed by Tucker Carlson Network.
PART ONE
Panagiotis Pavlos: It is a joy to talk today, three years since the 24th of February 2022, with Igor Lopatonok, a great filmmaker, a multifaceted personality, a Ukrainian-Russian-American living in the US. I thank him for accepting to have this conversation. Dear Igor, thank you very much for your time.
Igor Lopatonok: Thank you Panagiotis. Thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure to speak and to share my vision.
PAVLOS: On the eve of 3 years anniversary of the war in Ukraine (Sunday, 23/2/2025) we heard President Zelensky declaring that he is even willing to resign, should that be in exchange of peace in Ukraine. In a virtual meeting with President Zelensky the day after (Monday, 24/2/2025), European leaders expressed their support and declared that ‘nothing can be decided about Ukraine without Ukraine’. The United States of America are also involved in a direct settlement of the Ukrainian issue with Russia. There was some first rounds of talks in Riyadh and elsewhere, and there is information about a deal between the US and Ukraine. How do you see the current situation?
Background of the Conflict
LOPATONOK: This is an important three-year anniversary. To understand the dynamics of this conflict we need to go deeper. It did not start on February 24, 2022. This was an important development but it all started in 2014 with brutal killings that took place on Maidan square in Kyiv, from February 18–21, eleven years ago. It was a brutal, violent coup d’ état with a democratically elected government in Ukraine overthrown by protesters on the streets of Kyiv. This led to February 24, 2022, when Russia started its special military operation, which is not a conventional full-scale war.
The goal of this operation was to protect Russia’s national interests and security. Russia outlined it in 2021 very loudly and everywhere, by publishing and sending its requirements to all Western governments. As it was stated, growing Ukraine as a hostile state on the border of Russia, arming Ukraine and allowing it to commit the genocide in Donbas is unacceptable and it should be ended. There was also the demand to withdraw nuclear weapons from Europe, and that the US withdraw their troops from Baltic states.
Nobody listened to that and nobody wanted to think Russia has a legitimate goal and interest to take care of its own security. This led to military incursion of Russian troops into Ukraine in a pronounced goal to stop the development of nazification of the country, to demilitarize Ukraine, and to bring it to the status of neutrality by not allowing Ukraine to become a NATO member. Per now, we see Russia achieving all its goals slowly.
I also need to counter the narrative developed by the State Department and announced by Mr. Blinken to his mouthpieces, that Russia would conquer Kyiv in three days.
Russia never said that. This was a statement originated from the US State Department. Mr. Blinken, who is a warmonger and was the Secretary of State at the time, was after this idea. They knew Russia has a different plan than a full scale war, but they did not want to listen to Russia. They did not want to talk to them.
Now they are talking together because we have a dramatic 180 degree turn in the US foreign policy. First, the United States can no longer afford to run this war because it is costly. Second, this is an unwinnable war because Russia proved a military might and dedication to achieve their goals. Thirdly, Europe is still delusional, because the European Union bureaucracy does not represent the interest of the citizens of European nations. They only think about how to make themselves more rich and powerful while they fear Russian imminent victory. So what is going on now?
Now we have a direct conversation, and Zelensky seems to no longer be that relevant and important. Why? First of all, he is a man of a lot of words. He says one thing, then another. Three years ago he begged for credit from Western countries. Now he says the US granted him one hundred billion dollars for free, in no way to return them. So Zelensky is a man of irrelevant words, because nothing is related to what will be achieved, to what he will do whatsoever.
He does not really matter, because, first of all, he cannot win the war against Russia. Second, he is very unpopular in Ukraine. He seizes the power. He is not a legitimate president anymore, since his term in office has ended more than a year ago. There is no longer a body with a legitimate power in Ukraine to rule the country, since the Parliament has also expired. On their explanation that there is a war preventing them from election, I want to remind you that even during the WWII elections took place in the US; there was nothing wrong with that election. Elections is what makes a country democratic and not a dictatorship as it is now in Ukraine. To hold an election is a very simple process.
What is now ongoing is quite amazing. There is a direct negotiation between the United States and Russia; first, on how to restore diplomatic relationship and, second, on how to bring peace and stop the war. Peace is achievable because Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin talk to each other. They understand that both nations want this proxy war against Russia to end. Russia has welcomed this idea. This does not mean Russia will accept all the conditions the United States will formulate. It will probably be a hard negotiation. But I also believe it will be a very fruitful one, and we will see results quite soon.
Zelensky’s case
PAVLOS: I heard the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine announcing that they are finalizing details of an agreement. This makes me wonder about President Zelensky himself, to what extent he will remain in power, or whether the counting-down has started and his political time is reduced.
LOPATONOK: Mr. Zelensky with all his political bowing to the United States, has no good relationship with President Trump. I personally believe President Trump does not forget that Zelensky was used twice for his impeachment. His famous phone call was leaked and it was the cause of the first impeachment.
Having made a movie related to the Russia hoax in the United States, a documentary series called ‘All the President’s Men’, I know some details from people who were personally involved into this. I am especially talking about Rudy Giuliani, who at that time was a lawyer for Donald Trump. He was sent by Trump to investigate the Biden wrongdoings and the crimes of Biden family in Ukraine. Zelensky had a chance to reveal everything they have on Hunter Biden and the Biden wrongdoings, but they decided to play the game. They did not help President Trump, on the contrary: they tried to compromise him. I do not think President Trump has a good relationship with Zelensky either.
Therefore, I believe that for the sake of peace in Ukraine it is better for Zelensky to be removed from power, a new election to be called, and a new leader to come. I understand there is no opposition left in Ukraine, because all these years Zelensky has prohibited all oppositions. He jailed a lot of people, dispersed the political party, and ceased TV channels and independent media. He established a dictatorship very similar to the Nazi Germany of the WWII pre-war and war time. This is why now Zelensky does not represent the Ukrainian people. In a sovereign nation the power belongs to the people. People of Ukraine need to make a new choice. They need to choose the person who will lead them.
I am Ukrainian, you know. I was born in the Soviet Union. One day I woke up as a Ukrainian, in December 1991, when Soviet Union ceased to exist and Ukraine announced its independence. I did not choose my state. I belonged to the Soviet Union, but I started to be Ukrainian. My first citizenship was Ukrainian. When I moved to the United States and through the naturalization, I received the American citizenship and later I received the Russian citizenship. I hold three citizenships Ukrainian, American and Russian. So I describe myself as a Russian – Ukrainian – American, or Ukrainian – Russian – American. This has provided me the different angles through which I am looking into the conflict.
This conflict is nothing else than just a proxy war. What Biden administration arranged, starting from 2014, had a single goal: to make Russia weak, to surround Russia with a ring of fire, and to bring Ukraine to fight against Russia, which they successfully achieved. But this war has now lost its engine and steam because Biden is no more in charge of our nation and the US have no reason to fight Russia.
Therefore, Zelensky is not important. This is not a war that Ukraine initiated on its own. It was initiated on request and demand by people who make a great profit from it. These people are no longer in charge in the White House, and the war is about to extinguish no matter what Zelensky is about to do. It does not matter what Zelensky, or Europe, are about to say. Without US leadership in NATO and in this war, Europe will be moving in a totally opposite direction.
Project Ukraine: History and the Present
PAVLOS: I want to comment on two things you mentioned. As I have the privilege to converse with one of the few people perhaps who have both American, Ukrainian and Russian citizenship, you are the ideal person to ask: how do people in Ukraine, both in the area directly affected by the conflict, the eastern parts of Ukraine where most of the Russian speaking population is located, and in the entire country, perceive the situation right now?
I guess there has been a lot of divide during the previous years. Now there is a lot of destruction and damage. I heard President Trump insisting on the huge amount of losses. We are talking about a devastated Ukrainian society. Yet do these people have a clear mind on who they are? How ‘radically’ do they differ from Russians after 1991? And how do you see a new balance developing within the Ukrainian society?
LOPATONOK: I speak to my friend who is now in Canada and has helped me a lot with the graphics in my films. He told me: ‘Igor, I want to go back to Ukraine, I want peace finally to come’. I asked him why he wants to leave: ‘Because Canada is not my home, I love Kyiv, I love to be back home’. Ukraine was a good country. It was different than Belorussia and I must mention the three biggest commonalities in Ukraine.
First of all, I am sorry to say, Ukraine is not a nation. It is a project. As we study and dive deeper into history, Ukraine was never mentioned as a state in any historical records until the beginning of 20th century, when it gained its first independence for 18 months. This independence, however, was only since Lenin was negotiating with Germany, and they gave Ukraine to Germans for them to have it as a military protectorate. They were looking at Ukraine as part of their future land. This did not happen, Ukraine lost independence in 18 months, and the ruler of Ukraine ran on a train into Berlin.
Before that, there was Russia for more than 300 years, when back in the 16th century Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657) was leading the uprising of Zaporozhian Cossacks, and they made a union with the Crimean Tatars to fight against Rzeczpospolita. After that, they made union with Rzeczpospolita to fight against Crimean Tatars. And finally, Bogdan Khmelnytsky broke both unions and he plead to Russian Tsar to accept this territory into the Russian Empire. It was not an easy decision for the Russian Tsar to make. After careful consideration and a lot of talks, a union treaty was signed, the Pereiaslav Agreement that stood for more than 300 years. Ukraine and Russia went into war with Rzeczpospolita immediately after that, and they won.
After the Revolution in the Imperial Russia, the Bolsheviks gave to Ukraine a lot of territories. First it was Donbas, mostly populated by Russian speaking people, very industrialized and the capital of industry of coal mining and metallurgical industry in Ukraine. In the late 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine. Before that, just prior to the beginning of WWII, Stalin seized the western part of Ukraine and part of Bessarabia, which now continues to be the southern and western part of Ukraine. The whole building of Ukraine to the borders of 1991, when Ukraine gained independence after Soviet Union ceased to exist, was an artificial state. Why was that?
First of all, the common language of all people living in Ukraine was Russian. They still speak Russian in their families. They still speak Russian even inside Zelensky’s inner circle, in the government of Ukraine. Second is the faith, the Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy is the common faith in Ukraine. Third is the culture. They have a common culture and even the top cultural achievement of Ukrainians was accomplished by educating these people in the Imperial Russia, in Saint Petersburg. I am talking for instance about Taras Shevchenko, a great Ukrainian poet who studied in Saint Petersburg financed by his Russian friends.
The three biggest Slavic nations living on this territory are Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. There is a slightly different type of dialects of Russian languages. Ukrainians understand Russian and Russians understand Ukrainian language very easily. But in Ukraine they use Russian language rather than Ukrainian. Therefore, to see these people fighting each other is a big pain for me.
But this was the only way to conquer Russia, to make them fight each other. That was outlined when Kievan Rus existed, and that was also the call for unity by the great Russian state leader, Alexander Nevsky. He was a duke. He was born in the Golden Horde but he stood to unite all Russian lands on the base of language, faith and culture. This was succeeded with Dmitry Donskoy, the Russian tsar who fought and liberated Russia from the Golden Horde oppression.
Since then, the Slavic nation we know as Russian Imperium, Russia, started to flourish and develop in this area. Russia also invested a lot of material resources in developing Ukrainian industry. The biggest metallurgical plants were built in the Soviet Union time on the territory of Ukraine. They fought together against Nazi during WWII, despite even the significant collaboration Ukrainian nationalists had with Nazis in Germany.
Nazi and National Ideology
I need to step on this and explain what kind of ideology contemporary Ukraine cherishes and makes it a leading national ideology. This is presented very badly, in my point of view. People such as Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian radical nationalist is the brightest example: under WWII he collaborated with Nazi Germany and commited atrocities and war crimes against the Jews and others, on the territory of Ukraine.
They were so cruel in their atrocities that even the Waffen SS, the special forces of Nazi Germany that were in charge for this ethnic cleansing, feared the reign of terror that Ukrainians lived under by their own people, as it was the case with the Jews and the people of Belorussia. They burned people alive as they did in the Khatyn, a Belarusian village. More than 2000 villages were burned, and people were exterminated. Germany had special task operations such as Wunderland and Winterzauber. They wanted to clean the land out of Slavs and resettle in this area people from Germany, and so Ukrainian nationalists served them very well.
This is the kind of people who are now heroes in Ukraine. This is how Ukraine proceeded to be a breeding pool for all neo-Nazi scum in contemporary Europe. This is dangerous, because people are armed to the teeth, Nazi, they do not understand what they are doing.
When I saw a quite significant mass protest taking place in the United States (23/2/2025), in Chicago and Los Angeles and Washington DC, where Ukrainians with Ukrainian flags demanded that President Trump changes his policy and that he keeps supporting Ukraine with money for running the war, I did not have any doubts: they were commanded from Kyiv to do so.
The Ukrainian diaspora, mostly in the United States, Canada, and Australia, are people who ran away out of Ukraine during the end of WWII, when the Soviet Union and the Red Army was liberating Europe from the Nazi scum. In their running away they found support from CIA and other foreign secret services, as well as from the necessity of the Cold War to run the Cold War against Soviet Union. They were useful tools. They established a large presence in the lobbying of both the legislative and the executive American branches of power, and they are quite vocal in their support of Ukraine.
Challenges of a deal
PAVLOS: How, do you believe, the deal President Trump is about to bring with Ukraine will heal the wounds you described, not only wounds of war but also of the Nazi prehistory and the extreme right nationalists?
LOPATONOK: President Trump is different than President Biden in that he takes care of the American interests. This deal consists of two parts. First, it will secure a path of return for the American finances invested in Ukraine under Biden time. As you know, America has allocated more than 200 billion dollars. Zelensky said it was a grant, not a loan, but our sitting President has a different view on this.
So, the first part will be the minerals deal with the US signing an agreement with Ukraine on all minerals reserve in Ukraine, including gas, oil, rare earth, coal and iron ore. This is a part of concession to the US and the US will develop these resources together with Ukraine. Honestly, I do not see any possibility to take good money out of that. But President Trump needs to show to his American people that he takes care of the money invested.
Second, the real peace deal will be structured when Russia and the US negotiate. I will not go into speculation. I believe Russia will keep the territories they have taken under their control, because these are now part of Russia. There is no way for Russia to retreat from these territories, Crimea, Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Lugansk. They are now part of Russia.
Most of the negotiation is supposed to be soon finished if Ukraine does not want to lose more territory. For the more they are against the more territory Russia will conquer. Russia is on offense and Ukrainian resistance is crumbling because they understand peace is coming and people do not want to die right before a peace agreement is signed. Further, they have a problem with human resources, weaponry, and ammunition. As this is already a war of attrition for more than two years, Russian economy, though not switching to full military economy state, is much better and stronger in this regard than the economy of the 50 countries supporting Ukraine.
Russian military industrial complex was developed in the Soviet Union to withstand the war against NATO, against all countries. So the capacity of this military industrial complex is big enough. Russians are dedicated in delivering fighters, warriors, everything they need. There were a lot of changes on how contemporary warfare is developing. Now it is rather a war of drones and artillery than a war of tanks or infantry assaults. Aviation is totally different now, as well. Planes and helicopters do not play such an important and crucial role on the battlefield. They mostly play with drones. Both Russia and Ukraine are advanced in this weaponry.
However, this is a war of attrition. It is not only about the battlefield. It is also about how you can logistically support the battlefield with munition and troops. Ukraine does not have the capacity of Russia in human resources. Certainly, Russian industry is much bigger and much more developed, and Russia is a self-sustained country. So sanctions practically do not cause any big harm since Russia can practically substitute, by locally produced, virtually any war equipment they use.
You should also not forget that China, even in pronouncing neutrality in this conflict, silently helps Russia on economy. They buy Russian oil and gas, and they supply Russia with electronics that is easy for Russians to use everywhere, including the military. This was the position of China: to not go directly into the conflict, to call for peace. They understand that if Russia falls now, next target will be China. Without Russia it will be harder for China to withstand, so they support their natural ally.
The damage of Europe
PAVLOS: After all the efforts and European support to Ukraine in terms of weapons – even Norway has sent artillery and they reiterate that they will continue to support Ukraine militarily and financially – I wonder where on earth do all these weapons go and how they contribute to Ukraine since they are in such a bad position on the field?
LOPATONOK: You remember the famous call of Victoria Nuland with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, in 2014, when she said to him ‘Fuck the EU!’. And, sorry to be realistic, this truly happened to the EU. For, who is suffering from this war? Ukraine, of course. Russia does not suffer. The EU cut off the Russian energy resources, gas, at first. They still buy oil but more expensively; they buy it from India and China that are now intermediaries in the sales of Russian energy to Europe.
The cost of energy rose dramatically especially in Germany which has high energy consuming heavy industry. It was a robbery of Europe. Instead of cheap Russian energy, they started buying expensive US LNG (liquefied natural gas), because Europe does not produce energy. If you look at who are the producers of energy, these are mostly BRICS countries. Europe, with members in another club, the G7, is a consumer. In numbers, this gives us roughly 25 million of barrels of oil per year. This is exactly the amount produced by the BRICS. So the BRICS are producers of energy while the G7 are rather consumers. Energy is a key because the size and volume of economy is based upon the volume of energy secured for economy. This is very simple, and therefore the sanctions do not play a role: the more energy goes expensive the more profit comes from exporting the energy that Russia possesses.
Any attempt to damage Russian energy infrastructure was even prohibited by the US. The latest development was when Ukraine struck the Kazakhstan infrastructure, when Kazakhstan oil belonging to an American company was exported to Europe. That was a very clear sign to Western economies in whose interest Ukraine is fighting this war; this war is not in the interest of Europe.
Why does Europe support Ukraine so much, even when the US have dropped their own support? This was the initial plan. And, had it not become clear that Biden administration was doomed with him in charge, the great US nation would never make any progress. This was one of the reasons of the call on behalf of the American people to change the government, from Biden for Trump. Trump is a very pragmatic and realistic person. He understands this war is not winnable. So they are cutting off more than half of the support to Ukraine, leaving her in 1 to 1 with Europe. The last resort for Zelensky to maintain the war is to rely on European support.
Europe is not a monolith. It is unfortunate that bureaucracy in Europe seizes the power and that Brussels command Berlin, Paris, and Rome. But I see that there are people who are pragmatic and do real instead of fake politics, such as Viktor Orban or Robert Fico or others, who said ‘no more war in Ukraine’, ‘no more help to Zelensky’. All what Zelensky wanted is to continue this war because there is no more real economy in Ukraine, only military and war economy. This economy only exists in terms of payment and payroll from Western governments. Ukraine has no power, no money, no resources to run this war without help. Without greater participation on behalf of the US, this war will extinguish very soon.
Further, the more the European people understand that the war in Ukraine is making them suffer economically, the more discontent they will be, and we shall see more regime changes and different political parties coming to power in Europe. I believe that after Orban and Fico there will be a big move in Italy, because Meloni and especially political entities more right than Meloni, people such as Salvini, do not stand by the big supporters of this war. That is how the monolith of European support will diminish.
In addition, it is very important to understand that Europe has no united command of military forces. NATO is in charge. But NATO belongs to the US. If the US have disagreements with NATO command, they will try to change the commander of NATO. If they do not succeed, they can abolish NATO and withdraw.
Actually, I believe this will be the greatest move for the US to do, because NATO was designed to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Soviet Union ceased to exist and there is no reason for NATO to exist any longer. They used the war against Yugoslavia and Serbia as a cause to justify the existence of NATO, and they bombed Serbia in 1999 just because of that. They wanted to bring some discipline to NATO and reassure that they need to be in charge. They need to be in some process of unity to run a war against somebody else. So I believe that it will be a big problem with the understanding of NATO and the United States. This is what will bring a difference in the position of the EU supporting Ukraine.
END OF PART ONE
Ukraine on Fire:
Igor Lopatonok in an exclusive interview with Panagiotis Pavlos, on the 3 years of war in Ukraine and the 80 years anniversary since the end of World War II – Part II
In the first part of our interview, Igor Lopatonok privileged by the fact that he holds three nationalities, Ukrainian, Russian, and American, offered a thorough analysis of the background of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, on the three-year anniversary since February 24, 2022. He portrayed the Ukrainian president Zelensky and stressed the fact that his involvement in Trump’s impeachment procedure has caused him a significant lack of trust before the President of the United States. He outlined the prehistory of modern Ukraine, since the 16th century, with an emphasis on its relationship with Germany since the WWII and up until 2014, to reveal the real causes of the war that started in 2022. He pointed to fundamental challenges a deal between Ukraine and the US brings about and briefed the damage that Europe itself has suffered from this war.
PART TWO
Panagiotis Pavlos: Speaking earlier of the Ukrainian society you mentioned the component of religion. There is a whole ecclesiastical issue in Ukraine. How do you react to the autocephaly granted to Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarchate?
Autocephalous ‘Orthodox Church in Ukraine’
Igor Lopatonok: The autocephalous Church is a fake one. There is only one legitimate Church in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But let me tell you the story of how this autocephaly exists. In 2014 Mr. Poroshenko, who was pronounced in 2014, called an election and illegitimately removed President Yanukovych. Why illegitimately? Because on February 25, 2014, right after the coup they held a parliamentary session and they voted for the removal of President Yanukovych who at that time was in Moscow. They used and conducted that vote in a strict violation of the Ukrainian law and the Constitution.
The new elected president Poroshenko understood the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church in canonical terms. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church practices the same religion as part of the Russian Orthodox Church – autocephaly for this Church was granted in the 15th-16th century (1448-1593). But we need to go deeper into this.
With the Florence Union, Catholics started practicing in Orthodox churches in Constantinople. That led, I believe, to the removal of the holy protection of the Holy Mother out of Constantinople. Thus, the Fall of Constantinople was not only due to the military power of the Ottoman Empire, but also because at that time they had started to allow Catholics practicing in Orthodox churches, in Constantinople.
PAVLOS: There was essentially a Union already implemented in Constantinople?
LOPATONOK: Correct. This is the biggest difference here, between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s Church: Russian Orthodox Church has at least 200 million preachers whereas Patriarch Bartholomew has 1 million. So when President Poroshenko wanted to have his own Church in Ukraine and call it the ‘Orthodox Church in Ukraine’, they reached Patriarch Bartholomew and they bribed him with an amount of $25 million, I believe. It was exactly for that money that the Autocephaly Tomos, the independence, of Ukrainian Orthodoxy was granted. But they have empty churches. They try to seize the churches from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because people there keep going to the hurch in their all day life.
This is a business matter, not a matter of religion, not a matter of faith. The fake Church Poroshenko established in Ukraine was only to serve his political goal to make a division between Russian and Ukrainian people, and attack one of the three uniting principles: common language (Russian), common culture, and common faith (Orthodoxy).
They started with the language. They started prohibiting Russian language in Ukraine and diminishing its study. Second, they tried to create a competitive Church. But this is not working because people still go to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and they still believe in their way what they believe. Patriarch Bartholomew plays this game because he sees some assets in Ukraine. This was a business for him, and it was a business for Poroshenko as well.
After that they started acting more aggressively, by persecuting Ukrainian Orthodox Church priests in the false pretext that they were supporting the Russian aggression against Ukraine. This is complete nonsense. But they are interested in churches as business because the Church is a source of great richness; people donate to the Church. Ukrainian Orthodox Church has numbers of churches and episcopals even bigger than the ones under Russian Orthodox Church in Russia.
My friend Tucker Carlson is a good supporter of the oppressed Christians in Ukraine. Do not also forget that Zelensky is not even Christian. He is a Jew and all his friends are rabbis. He is not anyhow related to our faith. He is on the side of people who crucified Jesus Christ and blamed the Romans for that.
PAVLOS: Do you believe the ecclesiastical issue will be included to the negotiation table? How would one imagine a Jewish leader to make decisions on a Christian Church issue?
LOPATONOK: This is a very good question. I believe that Russia will bring freedom of religion, freedom of faith, and that the peace agreement will include Russian language, as well as non-prosecution of oppositions and allowance of free media in Ukraine. The peace agreement will be negotiated with the US, not with Ukraine.
I would like to note another thing as well. After the attempt against Donald Trump’s life that happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump has become much more religious, more believer than before. I believe that he witnessed the brief of the Holy Spirit on his own head, when he suddenly turned it and the bullet flew millimeters away from his brain. That is why President Trump has established a special body in the White House, a kind of ‘faith department’ of the White House; not an executive government body but a body representing connections to different religious communities. So, it is crucially important that Orthodoxy is also included in this and therefore Ukrainians try to squeeze their own representative in this body. Fortunately, this is not going to happen.
We know how skillful Ukrainian diaspora is in the US, but they have very little to do with Orthodoxy in Ukraine. There is a canonical Orthodoxy that is under the canonical head of Moscow Patriarchate, but they are completely independent management–wise. They do not report to Moscow, but they practice in the canonical way of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is why this Church is on target in Ukraine.
One should not forget that this was not something invented by Mr. Poroshenko or Mr. Zelensky. This was invented here, in the river of Potomac (Washington DC), when people who fought the Soviet Union and Russia afterwards, pointed that Russian Orthodox Church is a second unification factor, after language. So, they needed to fight against that Church. They needed to bring division there.
Their third goal is the common victory in WWII against the Nazi. They criticized the role of Russia, they diminished it and misrepresented the facts in a way to show that Russia was not the victorious part of that war but rather an ally of the Nazi Germany. This is complete nonsense. All this has a single goal: to bring more division between Ukrainian and Russian nations.
Oscar-Awarded Oliver Stone, Trump’s Impeachment, and documentaries
PAVLOS: I cannot afford completing this conversation without asking you about ‘Ukraine on Fire’. You have worked it together with Oliver Stone. And of course, there is also the recently released ‘All the President’s Men’, where you had, among others, George Papadopoulos, Rudolph Giuliani, and Roger Stone, on board.
LOPATONOK: I started my career in the movie business in 2005, when I was bored of doing other business and decided to find some occupation that was both entertaining and interesting to me. Addressing million people through the language of moving images, is something that excites me a lot. In 2013, I moved to Los Angeles because of my movies. I met with Oliver Stone when I was looking for a good producer, a big name who could bring visibility to my project which at the time was ‘Ukraine on Fire’. I was only the producer of this film.
When we secured Oliver Stone’s participation as an executive producer at first, and secondly as an interviewer, he forced me to direct that film and told me: ‘Igor, you can do that yourself!’. I said: ‘Oliver, I am a producer. I never direct movies’. He replied: ‘I am sorry, guy, but you know much more about Ukraine than I do. And you have a passion to do that. So go ahead, I will help you!’.
He helped me a lot. Six months after the first cut was ready, he threw it in the trash can, figuratively, of course, symbolically, and he said: ‘No! This is unwatchable! Let’s do it again!’. And he sat with us for a few hours, and we cut the first 30 minutes of ‘Ukraine on Fire’, as people watch it now.
That was my directorial debut and it was my first film on the Ukrainian crisis. Before that we did a little prequel that is called ‘Maidan Massacre’, with the great American director John Beck Hofmann. I was a producer of this film. In 2019 we did a sequel for ‘Ukraine on Fire’, which studied what happened in Ukraine since 2016 and later on; it is called ‘Revealing Ukraine’. For this film we interviewed President Putin. We also interviewed the head of the opposition party in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk.
In 2021 we released the fourth part of this film called ‘Ukraine, 30 Years of Independence: The Everlasting Present’, when we worked for the first time with interviewing a lot of Ukrainian politicians. I had a pleasure to hire Simona Mangiante, an Italian journalist and the wife of George Papadopoulos. She did 11 interviews in 7 days. The biggest one was with Ukrainian ex-President Mr. Yushchenko in Kyiv, and a couple of Prime Ministers and Ukrainian politicians.
After that we also made a lot of documentaries around the world. I made a documentary in Kazakhstan studying the story of this great nation. We call it ‘Qazaq: history of the Golden man’, and it refers to the ancient Scythian prince whom we find in the vicinity of Almaty and lived in the 4th century BC. This was 8 episodes of documentary series available exclusively on the online platform ‘Salem Now’, and the feature film Qazaq is available on Amazon.
Further, we filmed a very funny little movie with quite hard political hitting called ‘The Hunter’s Laptop: Requiem for Ukraine’. Here we study the Biden family affairs in Ukraine, corruption, not only financial but also moral, and the great power in the world.
After that we made my latest one, 6 episodes of documentary series called ‘All the President’s Men: Conspiracy Against Trump’. Sean Stone directed this documentary series, and I served as a producer. For this film I wrote the script together with my wife Vera Tomilova and the American journalist George Eliason. It was released on the Tucker Carlson Network on November 8, 2024, and our speakers were George Papadopoulos and Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, General Michael Flynn, Kash Patel, who is now the FBI Director, and Tucker Carlson. Tucker released it in their platform. People love it very much. It is a quite popular documentary series about the roots of Russia, Russia, Russian hoax and what has happened to people supporting Donald Trump from 2016 up until now.
I have a couple of projects under production that will be soon released, this summer I believe. I will keep it secret until we start campaigning. But I have to say, I am not only producing documentary films. I was in different projects as a producer, including a project on ‘Snowden’, a feature film by Oliver Stone directed in 2016 about Edward Snowden, a great US citizen who was a whistleblower working for NSA and revealed that American government spied on American citizens without any warrants.
Movie making is my passion and documentary is what I master some skill to do, a real drama from every story that I am covering in my films. I try to be honest and this is probably why my films have such a lengthy life cycle. ‘Ukraine on Fire’ is still fresh. We started doing the documentary in 2013, now it is 2025 and people still love to watch it.
Putin and the Neoconservatives
PAVLOS: ‘Ukraine on Fire’ is an amazing resourceful material. It awakes people on the Ukrainian issue.
LOPATONOK: Probably because we did it with passion and we worked it for 2,5 years. There was a challenge to bring an end to the making of this film and release it, because the situation was constantly unfolding, and we could not stop covering it. The initial start was Maidan. After that, the issue of Crimea succeeded and, further on, a plane was shot down in Donbas, and Ukraine initiated a war against their own people in Donbas, calling it ‘anti-terror operation’, which is why Mr. Putin comes to end and finish this war.
As we already said, the war did not start in 2022. It started in 2014 with a bloody coup d’état. After that, Mr. Turchynov, who was interim President of Ukraine at that time, started a war against his own people in Donbas, using artillery and aviation against civilians living in cities such as Donetsk and Lugansk with million inhabitants.
These are atrocities and war crime. I also think that lately Mr. Putin said that there is only one thing he regrets about: that he did not start the operation earlier. I believe this is quite a revelation, because if they started protecting Donbas earlier, it would probably not have been such a big scale conflict.
PAVLOS: Could this be evidence of him acting in good will and hoping all the way to the end that he would not have to act as he did? And as an argument against those who consider him a ‘lunatic person’, as they say, who wishes to conquer the entire Ukraine?
LOPATONOK: Listen. I have the pleasure to have met President Putin a couple of times for my own interviews. First it was in 2015, when we finished the ‘Snowden’ and Oliver started working, and I helped him, on a movie called ‘The Putin Interviews’. It is an amazing 4 pieces documentary series released on Showtime. Oliver interviewed Putin for his movie and he also recorded more than an hour-long interview about Ukraine; this was a cornerstone for the ‘Ukraine on Fire’ interview with Putin, that was conducted in his residence in the suburban of Moscow Novo-Ogaryovo.
What Putin did there – we also interviewed President Yanukovych with Oliver and the great American journalist Robert Perry, who was famous for breaking the story of Iran-Contra Affair and together with Oliver Stone, he was a great friend of him, he taught me how to do investigative documentary making – was to outline everything and all the goals of Neoconservative Americans such as Victoria Nuland and Senator McCain, as well as what they did to Ukraine.
This is an unforgivable sin. It is about bringing war to a peaceful nation, arranging friendly brother nations to fight Russian brothers, to be used as pawns. The Ukrainians were dumb enough to accept this role, to believe that the Neoconservatives in the US have principles. No, they do not have principles. They only have interests.
This is the biggest problem for the Ukrainian nation, to follow their leaders, to be allowed to be brainwashed, and to believe that they will live a better life, if they switch side, if they go from the hand of Russian influence to the hand of the influence of Washington. Nobody cared about Ukrainians in Washington. Even President Biden who promised Ukraine to stand with them to the end, he stood to his own end.
This is a very unfortunate end for Ukraine, and I wish to deliver some message for my fellow Ukrainians:
«I know you are afraid. You are afraid because you are practically living in a Nazi Germany of 1944–1945. But resistance to evil by force, this is what needs to be done in these things. The evil forces will not disappear without resistance. You need to fight against evil. And if you fight against it, even a single voice can be heard.
I know people jailed by the Ukrainian regime just because of their political stand. This is a reality. If you are in Ukraine, I understand why you stay calm, why you stay silent. But sooner or later, the hope of your own children and your own motherland will only be relied on your voice. Sooner or later, you will need to stand up and say ‘enough’!
If elections will be held under international supervision in Ukraine, they will show that Zelensky’s real popularity is close to zero. He was chosen to become President of Ukraine only based on his promises to stop the war. He not only did not stop it as it were, but he also went into full scale war with Russia. This is the stupidest, most irresponsible thing any leader of Ukraine could do, to start a war and sacrifice the lives of his own people that he was supposed to take care of».
The mediocre comedian
The problem with Zelensky is that he is not religious even in his Jewish beliefs, because if he believed in Judaism as a true believer, he would never start this war. Besides, the biggest goal for Jewish religious leaders was to keep the tribe safe and bring them out of Egypt, and because they wanted the people to be free and safe, they moved out. I study a little bit of Kabbalah and Judaism. It is a great religion.
Unfortunately, Zelensky does not believe in it. He is not religious. He does not believe in any God. He believes in power. He is an actor. People mention him as a great actor. But he was never a great actor. He was a quite mediocre comedian. I know the guy who made him famous, a Russian film director who lives here in Los Angeles. He made Zelensky a big figure in the entertainment business. The Ukrainian TV series Servant of Nation was just an information operation to bring him in charge of the presidential office. This went very unluckily for Ukrainians because they pay a price in human lives. Killing people during the war actions is unfortunate and non-reversible. You cannot resurrect hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of wounded.
All this lays on Zelensky’s conscience that I do not believe he has. He is not a statesman, because he does not think as a statesman. Every statesman in Ukraine needs to understand that Russia will still exist on the northern border. This is not an issue. This is an opportunity, because of sharing a common language. It is interesting that Mr. Putin has even calculated it in a percent of economical and competition benefits, because common language, culture and faith provide this opportunity.
Ukraine can be an amazing place for trade, for new Silk Road programs and the Belt and Road Initiative, a bridge from Asia to Europe together with Russia, pumping Russian energy resources to Europe and benefiting from this. A bridge for European nations inside Russia. Unfortunately, Ukraine chose a very wrong path. I feel sad about it.
I believe Ukraine will be okay after all this and that the brotherhood of Russia and Ukraine will be restored. As a religious person, as a believer, I read a lot of prophecies about it. There was a prophecy about Ukraine in WWIII, that it will fight against Russia on the side of the West and that they would lose. Now we see this prophecy’s fulfillment and nothing can stop it. Not even Zelensky, especially not Zelensky.
Trump the Peacemaker and a new Yalta
PAVLOS: Do you think this is a kind of WWIII, given the involvement of many countries?
LOPATONOK: Yes, I believe we went into WWIII: if you count how many countries in the world are on the side of Ukraine, they are more than 50. It is definitely a world war.
PAVLOS: I had never thought of it. I was rather thinking President Trump avoids WWIII…
LOPATONOK: Listen. WWIII is just a war. Every war ends up with a peace if it does not exterminate the entire civilization. This is what President Trump feels. He is a religious person who prioritizes family values rather than values of power and his ego. So he values life more than anything else. Sooner or later, he brings the idea that you need to negotiate peace, you need to make an effort. Trump understands that if he makes this effort he will stand on the right side of history, coming to end this war, stopping the proxy war against Russia because it is unwinnable, making peace with Russia and restoring for the sake of both nations, Russians and Americans, the good relationship with Russia.
We have such a lot of things to do together. Space exploration, flying to Mars, arranging anti-asteroids defense for this planet. We have a lot of work to do on health, improving infrastructure and making people’s lives better. War does not make people’s life better. War is a dirty business with a great, amazing profit. But it is dirty because you pay in blood for this. You pay in lives. This is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments, one of the first: ‘do not kill’. This is what as a religious person I stand by.
You know, my first degree was in rocket science. I studied how to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, especially engines for them, in Dnipropetrovsk. I have a few degrees, but this was my first one. So I know how devastating these weapons are and I know that preventing the beasts from flying is a goal. Actually, this weapon was developed to hold us from a mutual annihilation. Because if there was no mutual assured destruction (MAD) strategy, there would not be peace in this planet the last 70 years.
We all need to pray for a new Yalta, a new peace conference that will not only bring the war to an end, but will also outline the principles, the goals, and the red lines of the New World as a multipolar world. A world where the US for own reason give up on the principle of dominance and allow for a multiple multipolar world to emerge. Not because Ukraine wins this war, but on the contrary, because Ukraine has lost this war. This new multi-polar world will be a much better place to live. However, as with everything new, birth is related to blood. And there is blood during this birth time of a multipolar world.
PAVLOS: This is an impressive image. Who, do you think, would be the third part in this new Yalta?
LOPATONOK: Xi Jinping of course, that is, China for sure. China is not an enemy for the United States. China has never practiced expansionism and colonialism as a policy. They prefer to work through money and economy, through making people’s life better.
All the President’s Men
PAVLOS: Dear Igor, I wish to ask you a last question on the US and the new situation with President Trump’s administration. Many people have expressed concerns on this radical change. The old regime, the establishment is now suppressed. The Washington rooms are replaced by the so-called trumpists, although I do not agree with the negative connotation ascribed to the term. You have already mentioned people such as the new FBI Director Kash Patel, the General Michael Flynn, the former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Tucker Carlson. You know all of them well. What is your impression of the people surrounding President Trump who are now into implementing his agenda and goals?
LOPATONOK: The biggest difference from 2016 is that now Trump is well prepared for serving as President of the United States. His team is dedicated and strengthened by a tremendous pressure and unfair practices that were used against them from 2016 until 2024. They stole the election in 2020. They twice tried to impeach Donald Trump. They tied his hands when he tried to make peace with Russia.
Now President Trump has a dedicated team making his vision come true. This is not only Trump’s vision. Calling that ‘trumpist’ I do not see how it is a bad word. I can call myself a Trumpist because it is a movement: ‘Make America Great Again’. It is like a loud slogan and motto. But this was inside the American society, people have had enough of this lunacy during the Biden time, enough of this line that tried to present the wrong as right. What is right was presented as black. For example, Trump won the election of 2020, they stole the election and said Biden was elected properly, with no violation. All this is nonsense. People have had enough of this nonsense.
The American people carry on the highest power. Power belongs to the people. People choose their leaders and support the one who is aligned with their will. So it was not just a will of Donald Trump to destroy USAID as an agency committing influence operations and color revolutions around the world, financing all possible anti-government insurrections abroad at the cost of the American taxpayer.
Taxpayers do not want this. Taxpayers want cherished family values, here at home. They wish to have a good well-being and they do not care about interventionism as a policy idea of people such as Victoria Nuland or McCain or others. No. Americans do not have these goals. And they finally remove people from bureaucracy that are in charge, and they destroy these nests of warmongers who were spending their money.
You know, the attack against USAID was not only due to the tremendous waste of money. They also used that money inside the United States to make sure Trump will never be elected again. This is why it is so personal. They used this money to present Ukraine as a victim in this war and to make sure Ukraine is going to win. Ukraine is never going to win because the truth is not on their side. Everything built on blood and violence in the very beginning it is doomed to end up with even more blood.
Now we see the balances coming to end. There is enough of blood spilled. Let us stop it. Let us make peace. Ukraine and Russia deserve peace. Both nations pay a very high price for that. They have no will to fight each other. It was a third party’s interest that brainwashed the Ukrainian nation and by using it it completely seized mass media in Ukraine. If you look on the Ukrainian ownership of most vocal supporters of Zelensky and the war with Ukraine, they all are people and news organizations funded by Soros and the USAID. This is ridiculous. This is why they succeeded in this brainwashing process, because they use tremendous amounts of money and efforts to do so.
Lopatonok’s relationship with Greece
PAVLOS: You have a positive connection with Greece. Would you like to tell us a bit more about that?
LOPATONOK: I originate from the proximity of Dnipropetrovsk, at the eastern part of Ukraine. At the time I was born there was of course not Ukraine but Soviet Union. I finished the high school. My mother was a teacher. She taught history in a high school. She taught me how to read at a very early age. I started reading when I was 3,5 years old. I still read a lot of books. This is my passion: knowledge and study.
One thing that happened to me relates to the Greek philosopher. It is about the thesis of Socrates on how to develop a critical thinking skill. How to criticize everything that is possible as a way of receiving knowledge. Sometimes it is hard in a conversation, even with friends. But as a way to develop critical thinking, which is very important in our contemporary world, I believe Socrates plays a critical role in my way of thinking.
PAVLOS: You know, I am a philosopher, and my studies are on ancient philosophy and the philosophy of late antiquity. My research is on the relationship between Neoplatonism and early Christian thought, and the legacy of Platonism. I love both Plato and Aristotle and their consequent streams. But I feel more connected with Plato, perhaps because of his poetic nature. I also play the violin and music for many years. So, it is very interesting to hear about your encounter with Plato and Socrates.
LOPATONOK: Oh, yes! I look into Plato. I have three volumes of his complete writings standing in a very dedicated and important place in my bookshelf. Greek philosophers are the foundation of Western civilization. Were not these books available Western civilization would not exist as we know it. We witness that Socrates did not leave any writing. Plato was in correspondence with him, he very much covered his ideas.
You know, appearance nowadays, especially in the Western civilization, is more important than good or bad thoughts. It is a very dangerous thing. If you recall how Plato explained why Athens lost the war with Sparta, it was because Athenians were interested in appearance, and they probably were ten times more powerful state than Sparta. But they paid attention to appearance, to poetry and to poets, and they lived in dreams themselves. Instead of thinking about what is good or bad, they were thinking about appearances.
This struck me how undeveloped our political life is now. Even in contemporary US politics, which are very advanced, they still do not study Greek philosophers, they do not study Socrates, and they say, you know, you are going to lose the war.
This exactly happened in Russia: they cared about what is good, what is bad. They don’t care about appearances so much. And probably this is why they win for real and not only on the pages of publications and on the social media, as Ukraine does. This is very interesting to me because it shows how dangerous can propaganda be during the war; not only propaganda, but informational war or information influence operations, that happens right now and we study it in our films.
I have a lot of friends with Greek roots, I already mentioned George Papadopoulos, who was a speaker and executive producer for our series. My daughter lived in Greece for more than eight years, she studied there. She speaks Greek fluently and she even knows a little bit of ancient Greek.
Greece is the nursery of Western civilization, both in terms of the great Greek philosophers and dramatists, but also in terms of playing a role in establishing Christianity, the religion and confession I practice. This is very important for me. We are both Orthodox, even in a little bit different way of practice, but we still practice as Jesus Christ taught his Apostles to practice the faith.
Panagiotis Pavlos: Thank you very much, dear Igor. It was wonderful to hold this long conversation, and I am looking forward to future opportunities as well as to meet in person. Thank you so much!
Igor Lopatonok: I thank you very much for having me for such a long time. I hope the audience will enjoy it and watch our films. Have a wonderful day!
