Vladimir Putin has personally handed a new Russian passport to the American actor Steven Seagal and said he hoped the gesture showed a “normalisation” of strained relations with Washington.
Sitting at a round table in the Kremlin at a televised meeting on Friday, the Russian president showed the Hollywood star where to sign the passport.
The two men then rose and shook hands, with Putin saying briefly: “I congratulate you,” and Seagal answering, in Russian: “Thank you very much.”
The Kremlin released a transcript of their chat, with Putin saying they had been discussing citizenship for a while and agreed it must be an “absolutely depoliticised act”.
Putin said he hoped adding Seagal to the list of celebrities who have gained Russian citizenship in recent years could be seen as “a sign of gradual normalisation of the relations between our countries”.
Seagal called the passport a “great honour” to which Putin responded by telling him he hoped their “personal relationship will remain and continue”.
Seagal is the latest in a string of high-profile westerners to be granted Russian citizenship after buddying up with Putin.
Veteran French actor Gérard Depardieu was given a Russian passport in 2013 after the star became a tax exile in ire over rate hikes in his native country.
Putin has also handed out citizenship to US boxer Roy Jones Jr after sipping tea with him in Crimea and to American mixed martial artist Jeff Monson.
Seagal’s fame peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s with films such as Under Siege and Above the Law, but he remains hugely popular in eastern Europe and was granted Serbian citizenship in January.
Like Depardieu, he has previously hung out with Putin, a fellow martial arts fan, and other leaders from the former Soviet Union.
After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Seagal called Putin “one of the great living world leaders” and even performed with his blues band in the annexed Black Sea peninsula.
In August, veteran Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko made Seagal eat one of his homegrown carrots in an awkward encounter that drew mockery online.