Ukraine Adds Gerard Depardieu to 5-Year Blacklist

A spokeswoman for the National Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confirmed that the 66-year-old actor was barred from the country but refused to give specific reasons for the decision.

The portly “Green Card” actor is forbidden from entering Ukraine for five years, joining has-been actor Steven Seagal and composer Goran Bregovic on a list of famous folks who are persona-non-grata in the nation north of the Black Sea.

Still, the culture ministry said it had no plans of banning films starring Depardieu.

Depardieu took Russian citizenship to get out of paying higher taxes in his native France.

Ukraine’s culture ministry had previously identified Depardieu and other Russia-friendly global film stars as national security threats.

Mr Depardieu received his Russian passport during a meeting with Mr Putin in Sochi and was subsequently offered a home by the regional government of Mordovia, a Russian region best known for an extensive network of Stalin-era prison colonies.

French actor Gerard Depardieu holds a hand scythe in the presidential residence of Ozerny, outside Minsk, Belarus, July 22, 2015.

Russian Federation annexed Crimea in March 2014 after pro-Europe street protests in Ukraine chased a Moscow-backed leader from power, and has supported separatists in Ukraine’s east in a conflict in which more than 6,500 people have been killed.