Actor Steven Seagal visits Moscow terror attack victims
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US actor Steven Seagal visited victims of the Moscow concert hall shooting this week as he declared the attack a “terrible tragedy”.
Russia’s ministry of health posted photos of the 71-year-old meeting patients at the capital’s Pirogov National Medical Center.
“What happened was a terrible tragedy that should not have happened,” he said. “And I think that Russia will serve as an example and let the world understand that you can’t just do this to any people and go unpunished.
“I thank the doctors for the prompt work they are doing, I am glad to see that the patients are feeling well and are recovering.”
Russian authorities say at least 143 people were killed in the Moscow attack and hundreds more injured. It constitutes the deadliest attack claimed by Isis in Europe – and the worst such attack in Russia for two decades.
Mr Seagal, a retired actor most famous for his line of Hollywood action films, was granted Russian citizenship in 2017.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, he expressed his support for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his allies at a dinner for his 70th birthday in Moscow.
According to The Times, the allies present at the event included Russian state TV host Vladimir Soleviev and Russian journalist Margarita Simonyan, both of whom were on an EU sanctions list in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a video that circulated on Twitter at the time, Mr Seagal, who previously called Putin “one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader, alive today”, could be seen calling everyone in the room “my family and my friends”.
He added in English, with a translator by his side: “I love all of you and we stand together, through thick and through thin.”
When Seagal received his Russian citizenship in 2016, Ukraine barred him from entering the country, as fighting between Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces escalated in eastern Ukraine.
Last year, Putin bestowed a top state award on Seagal to reward him for his “international humanitarian and cultural work”.
He also joined a pro-Kremlin party in 2021, and visited a Russian-controlled part of eastern Ukraine last summer, where he met with a Russian-backed separatist leader.
