MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/. US actor Steven Seagal who was granted Russian citizenship on Thursday by President Vladimir Putin, said he was "tremendously grateful for this opportunity," a statement provided to TASS by his agent reads. 
 
 "I always felt that USA and Russia should be best friends and allies. Despite the unfortunate propaganda going on I remain fully committed to work tirelessly towards this end and I am tremendously grateful for this opportunity," Seagal noted. 
 
 "My father was pure Russian, my father’s family is primarily from Vladivostok. However, I have family from Siberia, Saint Petersburg and even Belarus. I have a tremendous amount of friends and family in Russia and former Soviet regions. I have huge respect and affection for Russia. As well as my own country," Seagal’s statement said. 
 
 As reported earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Steven Seagal. 
 
 This past September while attending the Edge of the World International Film Festival on Russia’s Far Eastern island of Sakhalin, the 64-year-old actor told reporters he didn’t rule out obtaining Russian citizenship. "I think Russian citizenship is somewhere on the horizon. I would love to spend a few months a year with my friends in Russia, with people who love me and await me here," said Seagal. 
 
 Steven Seagal was born in 1952 in Michigan, USA. He has so far starred in more than 120 movies most of which are martial arts action films. He has worked with the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Caine, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Trejo and other Hollywood stars. ||||| Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Steven Seagal at the Kremlin in Moscow on Nov. 25. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin via AP) 
 
 MOSCOW — In an ending fit for Hollywood, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday presented American action star Steven Seagal with a freshly minted Russian passport, consummating an odd-couple bromance that has blossomed despite years of dark relations between the two men's 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 '90s 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. 
 
 On Friday, 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 it 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. 
 
 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a Russian passport for actor Steven Seagal during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Nov. 25. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin/via AP) 
 
 Seagal, whose grandmother was born in the 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 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. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Vladimir Putin wants all Russians to be tough like Steven Seagal 
 
 Steven Seagal traveled to Belarus to meet ‘Europe’s last dictator.’ They ate carrots 
 
 Which Vladimir Putin personality matches your own? ||||| Hollywood action star has been very public in admiration for president and toured Moscow-backed states in media frenzy 
 
 Call it the “full Gerard”. 
 
 First, you travel to Russia and make complimentary remarks about president Vladimir Putin. Then you go to Chechnya and hang out with the Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov, laughing off concerns about his abysmal human rights record and dancing the traditional folk dance in the style of a man being Tasered. 
 
 Steven Seagal: a timeline from film star to Russian citizenship – gallery Read more 
 
 You are then invited back to Moscow, where you spend some one-on-one time with Putin and develop a personal rapport. You lap up the fawning media attention that nobody gives you back home any more. 
 
 For good measure, you throw in a few bizarre and thoroughly inexplicable trips to other countries in the region, in this instance to Belarus, where “the last dictator in Europe” feeds you a carrot, and then Kyrgyzstan, where you ride on horseback into a packed stadium clad in the armour of a medieval warrior. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Hollywood star improvises a traditional Chechnyan folk dance. 
 
 Finally, for Steven Seagal, as for Gérard Depardieu before him, comes the final stage: Russian citizenship. 
 
 “Vladimir Putin signed an executive order according Russian citizenship to Steven Seagal,” announced the sober decree published on the Kremlin website on Thursday morning, among other items of national importance such as government reshuffles and international treaties. 
 
 So far, there has been no personal man-to-man handover, as was the case in 2013 with Depardieu, when Putin handed him his new maroon travel document, and the corpulent actor grasped the Russian president in a sweaty embrace. 
 
 But the strength of the friendship between Seagal and Putin is well established. The US actor has said the Russian president could well be “the greatest world leader alive today”. One of the only bits of publicly known information about the private quarters of Putin’s residence comes, somewhat incongruously, from Seagal, who noted in an interview that it contains a life-size gold statue of Kanō Jigorō, the founder of judo. 
 
 Aside from his admiration for Putin, and a valiant though dubious attempt to enunciate Russian swearwords when he played a Russian gangster in the 2009 direct-to-DVD film Driven to Kill, Seagal would appear to have fairly limited grounds on which to qualify for Russian citizenship. 
 
 Apparently, though, that is enough. 
 
 “It was his wish; he really was asking for citizenship persistently and for quite a long time,” said Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Thursday. “He is known for his warm feelings to our country, which he has never hidden.” 
 
 Seagal joins a number of westerners who have sought, and been granted, Russian citizenship. In addition to Depardieu, the boxer Roy Jones Jr was made Russian last year. 
 
 For Seagal, Russian citizenship may give him the chance to burnish his film career with new opportunities and funding. Speaking in Kyrgyzstan in September, the actor also said he had a more lofty ambition: “To bring all people together, to live in harmony.”
– Vladimir Putin just took his bromance with Steven Seagal to a whole new level. The Russian leader has signed an executive order granting Seagal Russian citizenship, reports the BBC. A Kremlin rep says Seagal "was asking for citizenship persistently and for quite a long time," and his soft spot for Russia—the American actor once described Putin as "one of the greatest world leaders" and Russian's actions in Crimea as "very reasonable"—helped make it possible, per the Guardian. Seagal, whose father was Russian, says he's "tremendously grateful" for the honor and plans to "work tirelessly" until the US and Russia are "best friends and allies," per TASS.