President Putin Presents Russia's Highest Award to Hollywood Actor Steven Seagal

President Putin with Steven Seagal (Source: Kremlin)

JAKARTA - Russian President Vladimir Putin bestowed the nation's highest award on Hollywood actor Steven Seagal, in recognition of his international humanitarian and cultural work, according to a government decree published on Monday.

The decree said the 70-year-old action star, who starred in "Under Siege" among others, had been awarded the Order of Friendship of Russia. There was no immediate reaction from Seagal.

The decision said Seagal was working as the Russian Foreign Ministry's special representative for humanitarian relations with the United States and Japan.

The US-born actor and martial arts practitioner has long admired President Putin, receiving a Russian passport personally from the Kremlin leader in 2016.

Seagal, a frequent visitor to Russia, supports Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 as "absolutely reasonable," visiting Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine last summer, where he met a Russian-backed separatist leader.

On that occasion, he also visited the destroyed Olenivka detention center, where dozens of Ukrainian POWs were reportedly killed in an attack, the New York Post quoted him as saying.

Ukraine and Moscow blamed each other for the deadly attack on the facility last July.

Quoting CNN, he spoke about the existential threat to Russia from Ukraine in an interview on Russian television last year.

In 2017, Ukraine banned Seagal from entering the country for five years on grounds of national security.