Turncoat: Steven Seagal Celebrates 70th Birthday In Russia — Surrounded By Vladimir Putin's Closest Pals
April 13 2022, Published 12:51 p.m. ET
'80s action star Steven Seagal has a history of becoming friends with international leaders, but one of his most controversial relationships is between himself ... and current warring Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Seagal was filmed expressing his love and support for the close allies of the controversial president during a lavish meal in Moscow on Sunday to celebrate his 70th birthday.
Video currently making the rounds shows the former Hollywood leading man speaking at the function on April 10, surrounded by several Russian elites.
Many of those in attendance have been targeted by the sanctions amid the Russian army's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian state television presenter Vladimir Soloviev, who has openly backed Putin's invasion, can be seen standing with the Under Siege star along with Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian news conglomerate RT.
Seagal showed up in a customary black shirt and was seen wearing yellow-tinted glasses throughout the event.
The actor gave a speech to the "pro-Putin" audience where he said, "Each and every one of you, you are my family and my friends. And I love all of you and we stand together, through thick and through thin."
Seagal has a close relationship with Russia. He has claimed to have come from a Russian family and has gone as far as to call his father a "Russian Mongol."
The 70-year-old star has met with Putin in person several times in recent years and has described the Russian president as "one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader, alive today."
In February, Seagal appeared on Fox News where he claimed an "outside entity" pitted Russia against its neighboring nation.
"Most of us have friends and family in Russia and Ukraine," he told Fox News Digital.
"I look at both as one family and really believe it is an outside entity spending huge sums of money on propaganda to provoke the two countries to be at odds with each other."
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The same day Seagal celebrated his birthday with Russia's top brass, the mayor of the Mariupol in Ukraine announced that more than 10,000 civilians had died after enduring weeks of Russian bombing raids and suffering from hunger due to the invading siege.
On the following day, a third-party international forensic team of investigators arrived in the town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv, where they had witnessed the exhumation and examination of more than a thousand civilian corpses.
