At an upscale Moscow restaurant, things were bubbling as diners in cocktail dresses and expensive suits danced the night away.
They were gathered on Sunday for the 70th birthday of Steven Seagal, the American-born actor best known for playing tough cops and commandos in action films.
“Every single one of you, you are my family and my friends. And I love you all,” Seagal toasted, wearing his signature oversized black shirt.
“We stand together through thick and thin,” he added.
Seated at the table next to Seagal were some of Russia’s top Kremlin supporters, including the editor-in-chief of the state-controlled news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, and Vladimir Soloviev, one of the country’s most notorious propagandists, who translated Seagal’s speech into Russian.
The actor, who describes himself as a Buddhist, has long had a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and received Russian citizenship in 2016.
He previously called Putin’s annexation of Crimea “very sensible” and described the president as “one of the greatest living leaders in the world.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, he has doubled his support for Putin, saying in a recent interview that an “external entity” was to blame for playing the two countries off against each other.
The Kremlin and the state-controlled media have nurtured Putin’s friendship with Western celebrities like Seagal for decades, in what many saw as an attempt to improve his image at home and abroad.
“The main aim of all of this was to show that the country’s model of society was attractive to outsiders,” said Mark Galeotti, author of We Need to Talk About Putin and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
However, the number of Western stars and politicians who, like Seagal, are still willing to go “through thick and thin” with Putin has dwindled rapidly over the past month, and many are anxious to distance themselves from a country accused of War to wage crimes during the invasion.
One of the first of Putin’s friends to condemn Russia’s actions was French superstar Gérard Depardieu, who denounced “the insane, unacceptable excesses of its leaders like Vladimir Putin” in Ukraine.
Depardieu, who has received global recognition for his roles in films such as The Last Metro and Jean de Florette, became a Russian citizen in 2013 after criticizing the French government for its tax policies.
In a letter to Russian state television at the time, Depardieu exclaimed, “I love your President Vladimir Putin very much and it’s mutual.” Putin personally bestowed Depardieu at a special dinner earlier that year, where the two were pictured embracing Russian citizenship.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse in March, Depardieu, who is currently facing rape charges in France, called on Russia to “stop arms and negotiate.”
Depardieu’s remarks were met with anger in Russia, with Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the actor “didn’t fully understand” the situation in Ukraine. Some Russian officials have urged Putin to strip Depardieu of his Russian citizenship.
Criticism of Russia’s actions only increased after news reports emerged showing the bodies of men in civilian clothes lying in the streets of Bucha outside Kyiv, a testament to the full extent of the atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine must.
On Saturday, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi admitted he was “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the Russian leader’s actions.
Berlusconi, who is seen as an admirer of Putin’s macho style of government, famously visited a winery in Crimea with the Russian leader shortly after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.
The billionaire has now declared that Russia is responsible for “the horror of the massacres of civilians in Bucha and elsewhere, real war crimes”.
Putin has also been criticized by the so-called Western anti-establishment camp – journalists and celebrities who have previously expressed support for Russia in their mutual criticism of “American imperialism”.
Shortly after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, veteran US film director Oliver Stone, who defends Russia’s actions in Crimea in his documentaries and conducted a series of interviews with the Russian leader in 2017, tweeted that Putin’s “aggression in Ukraine “ a “mistake”.
“Although the United States has many wars of aggression on its conscience, that does not justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. A dozen wrongs don’t make a right. It was wrong for Russia to invade.”
While Galeotti argued that Putin probably “never placed much trust in foreign friends” a priori, he said recent criticism from once pro-Kremlin figures ultimately points to the growing isolation in which Russia finds itself.
“When Syria, Venezuela and Nicaragua seem to be the only real friends of a budding great power, one has to wonder what went wrong.”
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