In a video that was widely shot on Thursday, the Austrian-American actor and politician makes an unexpected comeback by addressing the Russian people to denounce the disinformation orchestrated by the Kremlin. And reveals, in passing, snippets of his youth.
The video, subtitled in Russian and posted yesterday Thursday on social networks, instantly panicked the counters: in less than twenty-four hours, Arnold Schwarzenegger's address to the Russian people and soldiers totaled more than twenty -two million views. Sitting at his desk, under a photo testifying to his muscular Mister Universe past, the Austrian-born ex-action hero delivers a powerful yet intimate speech, written by himself with the help of his team of communications and, according to the New York Times , a retired US Lt. Col. who specializes in Ukraine.
More Governator than Terminator – the actor was Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011 – Schwarzenegger denounces the disinformation and propaganda of which his “Russian friends” are victims : “Terrible things are happening that you should know. The sequence alternates between tight shots of the star and archival and news footage. In a fairly Hollywood moment, Schwarzie even pulls out a prop: a coffee mug given to her by her teenage hero, Soviet weightlifting world champion Yuri Petrovich Vlassov.
Moscow policeman
Between memories and confidences, in particular about his father who fought in Leningrad, on the Nazi side, and came back "physically and mentally broken", the one who played a Moscow policeman in 1988 in Double Détente, by Walter Hill, hammers out "facts" : " The Kremlin started this war", "The Russian government has lied not only to its citizens but to its soldiers" ... "I ask you to help me spread the truth", he hopes, before urge Putin to reason: “You started this war […], you can stop this war. The Kremlin follows twenty-two Twitter accounts. Including that of Arnold Schwarzenegger.