FILE PHOTO: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with U.S. actor Steven Seagal during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, November 25, 2016. Sputnik/Kremlin/Alexei Druzhinin via REUTERS.
LONDON — Russian President Vladimir Putin has bestowed a top state award on Hollywood actor Steven Seagal to reward him for his international humanitarian and cultural work, a state decree published on Monday showed.
The decree said the 70-year-old star of action films such as “Under Siege” had been given Russia’s Order of Friendship. There was no immediate reaction from Seagal.
The decree mentioned Seagal’s work as a special representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry for humanitarian ties with the United States and Japan.
The U.S.-born actor and martial arts practitioner has worked in Japan and has long admired Putin, from whom he received a Russian passport in 2016.
Seagal, a frequent visitor to Russia, backed Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 as “very reasonable,” joined a pro-Kremlin party in 2021, and visited a Russian-controlled part of eastern Ukraine last summer, where he met with a Russian-backed separatist leader.
Ukraine in 2017 banned Seagal from entering for five years on national security grounds.