Vladimir Putin grants Steven Seagal Russian citizenship

LINK to The Telegraph

3 NOVEMBER 2016 • 12:36PM

Vladimir Putin has signed an order to give action movie actor Steven Seagal Russian citizenship.

"I congratulate my friend Steve on the fact that now he has become our compatriot!" tweeted Russia's deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the martial arts star "had been really persistent for a long time" in asking for Russian citizenship, and is "renowned for his quite warm feelings toward our country".
The star of Exit Wounds and Under Siege has made regular visits to Russia since the Nineties, when he opened a branch of restaurant chain Planet Hollywood in Moscow.

In 2013, the Buddhist actor starred in a promotional campaign for ORSIS, a Russian gun manufacturer. He has Russian heritage – his grandmother was from Vladivostok – and he has appeared in publicity pictures for the the tourist office of Russia's largely Buddhist region of Kalmykia.

Seagal's close involvement with Russia led to his being dropped from the line-up of an Estonian music festival in July 2014. The following month, he appeared at a show organised by Russian motorcycle club Night Wolves in Sevastopol, where he spoke out in support of the annexation of Crimea.

He is understood to be close friends with the Russian president, whom he has called "one of the great living world leaders," and bonded with over a shared interest in martial arts: Putin has a black belt in judo, while Seagal has one in aikido. In a 2014 interview with Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, he said he thinks of Putin "as a brother."

According to BuzzFeed News, Putin had personally suggested that Steven Seagal should be made an honorary consul of Russia, so that the martial arts star could act as an intermediary between the US and Russia to improve relations between the two countries.

The website also claimed that deputy prime minister Rogozin had asked Seagal to use his “authority and connections in the American establishment” to help Russian companies break into the American gun market.

Steven Seagal, pictured at Putin's Victory Day parade in Moscow, 2015
Seagal is not the only Hollywood he-man to have been invited into Putin's inner circle: Jean Claude van Damme reportedly attended a bare-knuckle boxing match with Putin – alongside Silvio Berlusconi. In 2013, Putin granted Russian citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, after the actor left his native France for tax reasons.

"All that the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." – Robert E. Lee