American action star Steven Seagal has been banned from entering Ukraine after accepting Russian citizenship last year and voicing his support for Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, The Guardian reported.
The five-year banishment of the “Under Siege” star was confirmed by Ukraine’s security service in a letter to the local news site Apostrophe that said the actor had “committed socially dangerous actions … that contradict the interests of maintaining Ukraine’s security.”
In recent years, Ukraine has also barred outspoken French actor Gerard Depardieu and many Russian artists for similar reasons, the Guardian reported.
Seagal, whose grandmother was from Vladivostok, Russia, has called Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea “very reasonable” and that same year performed a concert with his blues band sponsored by a pro-Putin group of eastern Ukraine separatists.
Seagal has regularly visited Russia over the last few years, and has been pictured alongside Putin, who granted him Russian citizenship last November.