Actor Gérard Depardieu blacklisted in Ukraine

Baku. 22 July. REPORT.AZ/ French actor Gérard Depardieu has been added to a blacklist of people considered a “national security threat” to Ukraine, Report informs citing Russian media. 

His name was added to a blacklist of around 600 artists and performers drawn up by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture at the beginning of July due to the actor’s close ties to the Russian government. 

Ukrainian media are banned from mentioning or showing images of those on the list, while their films, songs or other works cannot be broadcast or published in the country, said the newspaper.

Depardieu, who took Russian citizenship in 2013, has frequently expressed his admiration for the country’s president Vladimir Putin as well as angering the Ukrainian government with comments about the ongoing fighting in the country’s east.

At a film festival in Riga, Latvia in August 2014, just months after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Depardieu declared: “I love Russia and Ukraine, which is part of Russia.”

The year before, this time at a film festival in Moscow, he spoke out in support of Putin, saying: “I do not really like presidents, I like men. Putin is very strong. Russia needs this man. God bless his soul.”

Depardieu quit France for Belgium in December 2012 and said he was handing back his French passport in protest over government plans for a tax hike on high earners.