Seagal in Red Square on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, Vladimir Putin presided over an enormous parade marking the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's 1945 surrender to the Soviet Union, known in Russia as Victory Day. The celebration served as a showcase for the Russian military, with tanks, missiles, and thousands of troops rolling through Red Square as more than 100 warplanes flew overhead. The BBC reports that at least 20 foreign leaders — including Chinese president Xi Jinping, Indian president Pranab Mukherjee, Cuban president Raul Castro, and U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon — watched the display alongside Putin, while their Western counterparts mostly boycotted the event in protest of Russia's actions in Ukraine. But at least one American dignitary did make it to Moscow: Putin's buddy Steven Seagal.
As BuzzFeed reported last month, Putin recently proposed that the over-the-hill action hero be made "an honorary consul of Russia in California and Arizona, and thus a potential intermediary between the White House and the Kremlin." Unsurprisingly, the White House didn't go for that idea, but Seagal's presence at the parade suggests he still takes seriously his duty to bridge the gap between Russia and the United States.
