Arnold Schwarzenegger has a few words for Vladimir Putin: "You started this war, you lead it and you can end it."
The 74-year-old Hollywood actor and Republican politician published a message on social networks on Thursday that aims to reach all Russians who are fighting in the Kremlin's offensive.
“This is not a war to defend Russia, one like the one her grandparents or her great-grandparents fought.
This is an illegal war.
Their lives, their bodies and their future have been sacrificed for a senseless war that has been condemned by the whole world”, he states in a nine-minute video.
Schwarzenegger asks the Moscow regime why they are willing to sacrifice all those young Russian troops for their personal ambitions.
“I know that the government has told the soldiers that this war is to denazify Ukraine.
That is not true.
This is a country with a Jewish president whose three paternal uncles were murdered by the Nazis,” he adds.
The former governor of California between 2003 and 2011 tries to remove the propaganda blindfold from all his supporters in Russia.
“Ukraine did not start this war.
Neither did nationalists or Nazis.
It was done by the people in power in the Kremlin."
The video of him had nearly nine million views on Twitter this afternoon and had been shared more than 80,000 times on Facebook.
The Austrian-born, later naturalized American bodybuilder claims that eleven million Russians have some kind of family connection to the country they are now bombing.
“Every bullet you fire is at a brother or sister.
The bombs that fall do not fall on an enemy, but on schools, hospitals or homes, ”says the Hollywood legend from his office and with a jacket that has the flags of California and the United States on the sleeves.
The politician, who champions a progressive current within the Republicans, tries to replicate with his speech the powerful message issued after the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by supporters of Donald Trump.
At that time, accompanied by the sword that he used in the filming of
Conan, the barbarian
, Schwarzenegger condemned the lies of the then occupant of the White House.
“President Trump is a failed leader.
He will go down in history as the worst president of all time.
He will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet,” he stated on January 10, 2021.
On this occasion, a more cautious message was reserved for Putin and the conflict in Eastern Europe.
He said that only four countries in the world supported the Kremlin's offensive, that it lacked legitimacy and is disapproved of by most governments in the world, which has caused the West to implement the most severe economic sanctions ever seen.
“There are moments so terrible that they force us to raise our voices,” he says.
And he adds: "Let everyone know about the catastrophes that are being experienced in Ukraine."
In his message this Thursday, the former governor of California shared a bit of his personal story.
He recalled that in 1961, when he was 14 years old, on a trip to Vienna he was able to meet one of his childhood idols, Yuri Petrovich Vlasov, a weightlifting legend.
"He was the first human to carry 200 kilos above his head," he has said.
But his father, an Austrian who fought with the Nazis in Leningrad, did not agree with his son professing devotion to a Russian, but this did not matter to him.
Years later, he met Vlasov again when he shot
Red Heat (
1988
) .
, the first US film to be shot in Moscow's Red Square.
The athlete then presented a fine porcelain cup that accompanied Schwarzenegger as he implored the Russians to end the nonsense of the war in Ukraine.
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