Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday presented his country’s highest award, the Order of Friendship, to 70-year-old former action star Steven Seagal for “international humanitarian and cultural work.”
The Order of Friendship, established by Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1994, is technically Russia’s highest award for non-citizens. In 2006, for example, Russia presented the award to U.S. Navy and Air Force officers for assisting with the rescue of a Russian submarine crew.
President Donald Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was controversially awarded the Order of Friendship in 2013 for helping to create a partnership for oil drilling in the Arctic and Black Seas. The partnership was splintered a year later by Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Seagal is a Russian citizen, having personally received his papers from Putin in 2016.
“I want to congratulate you and express the hope that this is another, albeit small, gesture and it might be a sign…
