Putin gave Seagal a Russian passport

From The Washington Post:, an article by Andrew Roth about the latest Russian gesture:

In an ending fit for Hollywood, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently presented American action star Steven Seagal with a fresh Russian passport, consummating an odd-couple bromance that has blossomed despite years of dark relations between the their respective countries.

Seagal is the latest of an aging generation of movie stars and sportsmen to take Russian citizenship, including French actor Gerard Depardieu in 2013 and boxer Roy Jones Jr. in 2015. Celebrated here for 1990s action flicks and YouTube compilations of him swearing in accented Russian, Seagal has become something of a cross-cultural confidant to Putin. In a 2013 interview with RT, Seagal called him “one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader alive today”. The men have at least two things in common: a love of martial arts and a dislike of the West's criticism of Moscow.

Seagal now has dual citizenship. Seagal accepted his new passport with an aikido-inspired bow, a photograph distributed by the Russian tabloid LifeNews showed.

“I want to congratulate you and express the hope that this is another, albeit small, gesture and might be a sign of the gradual normalization of relations between our countries,” Putin told Seagal, according to Reuters. (Spasibo Bolshoye, or “thank you very much”, the star of Under Siege and Exit Wounds replied.) The Kremlin first announced it had granted Seagal citizenship earlier this month.

Seagal, whose grandmother was born in the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, has made repeated, and often controversial, trips to Russia. In 2013, he met Chechnya's leader, strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, and danced an impromptu lezginka. In 2014, he joined a group of pro-Putin motorcyclists at a rally in the recently-annexed peninsula of the Crimea. A 2015 report by BuzzFeed News said that Putin suggested Seagal as an honorary consul to improve relations between the two countries.

The Moscow mobile operator Megafon has begun releasing advertisements with Seagal, including a version of the “mannequin challenge” at a recent press event.

Rico says we should encourage him to stay and make bad Russian movies... (And Rico says he thinks he's looking a bit more like Smeagol than Segal (he added the 'a' later in life, rather than be thought Jewish) these days...)