Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded American actor and Russian citizen Steven Seagal with the Order of Friendship.
The decree says that the award was given “for a great contribution to the development of international cultural and humanitarian cooperation.”
In my country blocked
present tense
Seagal is a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin. Both were born in 1952, both have black belts in Japanese martial arts: Putin in judo, Seagal in aikido.
Seagal was granted Russian citizenship in early November 2016. The passport was handed to him personally by Putin. In May 2018, the actor was among the guests invited to Putin’s inauguration, and in August 2018 he was appointed special representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry for Russian-American humanitarian ties.
In the summer of 2015, Seagal visited Sevastopol, annexed by Russia, along with members of the Night Wolves biker club. The head of the club, Alexander Zaldostanov, then presented Seagal with a statuette of a Russian soldier and one of the T-shirts with Putin. “I’m Russian,” Seagal said in response. “And this explains a lot,” Zaldostanov answered.
In August 2022, Steven Seagal visited the so-called “DNR”, including the colony in Yelenovka, part of which was destroyed by explosions on the night of July 29. As a result, at least 53 of the 193 Ukrainian prisoners of war held there were killed.
The “head” of the so-called “DNR” Denis Pushilin wrote that Seagal then “talked with prisoners of war in the Yelenovsky pre-trial detention center” and was filming a documentary about the war: “At the meeting, Stephen noted that 98% of those who talk to the media about the conflict are never here they weren’t. That’s why the world doesn’t know the truth. It wants to change the way it looks at this war.”
Segal was born in Michigan, but made a career in Hollywood, positioning himself as a martial artist and the first foreigner to be recognized as an aikido master in Japan. In the 1980s, he was the star of several successful action films: “Above the Law” (1987) – in the countries of the former USSR and Eastern Europe, he was shown in video salons under the name “Nico”, “Hard to Kill”, “Marked for Death” and “Under Siege” (Under Siege, 1992). In the latter, he played a military chef defeating terrorists who were trying to take over the battleship Missouri with a nuclear weapon on board. Since Under Siege, Seagal has released more than a dozen films, but they have mostly not been shown in theaters or have done little at the box office.
In 2018, the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office announced that it was considering a harassment case against Seagal. The women who accused him include actress Jenny McCarthy and journalist Lisa Guerrero. In March, two more women filed charges against Seagal, according to TMZ. One stated that he raped her in 1993. The second stated that in 2002, when she was 17 years old, she auditioned in a bikini, and the actor touched her breasts and genitals. In addition to them, actresses Portia de Rossi also complained about Seagal’s behavior (according to her, the actor tried to undress her during screen tests) and Juliana Margulis. The actor and his representatives denied allegations of harassment.
