Steven Seagal at an event in Kazan, Russia on July 27, 2022 Photo: picture alliance / Russian Look
From BZ/dpa
According to Russian media reports, US actor Steven Seagal visited the destroyed Olenivka prison camp in the pro-Russian separatist region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine after the death of dozens of prisoners of war.
“We are in Olenivka at the exact place where Himar rockets hit,” said the 70-year-old in a video distributed by Russian state media on Wednesday night. The star of numerous action films is considered a friend of Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin, has Russian citizenship and is a member of the Just Russia party.
Around 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed and several dozen injured in Olenivka prison at the end of July. Seagal followed the Russian account that the camp with Ukrainian POWs had been fired at with US missiles. Ukraine and numerous experts, on the other hand, see Russia as responsible for the war crimes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of a “terrorist attack” against the prisoners.
Seagal repeated the line of Kremlin propaganda. He accused Zelenskyy of torture and crimes against humanity. The action film actor said he wants to make a documentary about the war in Donbass. Seagal supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. Russian state propaganda treated the issue as a major event on Wednesday. In a video shared by Russian TV channel RT, Seagal said, “I don’t like having all these cameras on me.”
The prominent Russian foreign politician Leonid Slutskiy also proudly shared a picture of himself with Seagal on his blog on the news channel on Wednesday. Russia accuses Ukraine of shelling the prison building with American precision missiles. Kyiv and Western observers, on the other hand, speak of a targeted murder of the prison inmates by Russia.