By Joe Concha | The Hill – 06/01/17 11:29 AM EDT
In one conversation from a four-part Showtime documentary previewed on “CBS This Morning,” Stone broaches the topic of multiple assassination attempts against the 64-year-old Putin.
“Three times president, five assassination attempts, I’m told. Not as much as [Fidel] Castro, who I’ve interviewed. I think he must have had about 50. But there’s a legitimate five I’ve heard about,” Stone said.
“Yes, I talked with Castro about that,” Putin replied. “And he said to me, ‘Do you know why I’m still alive?’ I asked him, ‘Why?’ ‘Because I was always the one to deal with my security personally.’ But yeah, I do my job. And the security officers do theirs and they are still performing quite successfully.”
“In other words, you trust your security, and they’ve done a great job,” Stone said.
“I trust them,” Putin said.
“Because always the first mode of assassination … you try to get inside the security of the president,” Stone noted.
“I know that. Do you know what they say among the Russian people? They say that those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown,” Putin said.
“What is your fate, sir? Do you know?” Stone asked.
“Only God knows our destiny — yours and mine,” Putin said.
“To die in bed, maybe,” Stone said.
“One day this is going to happen to each and every one of us. The question is, what we will have accomplished by then in this transient world, whether we’ll have enjoyed our life?” Putin said.
“The Putin Interviews,” is scheduled to start airing on Showtime on Monday, June 12.
Showtime is a division of CBS.
Stone, who has won several Academy Awards for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” has been filming “The Putin Interviews” over the course of the past two years.