Vladimir Putin's Man Crush on Steven Seagal

When six members of Congress went on a fact-finding trip to Russia in May to learn more about the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombings, they sought the help of a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin: Steven Seagal. The aging star of bone-snapping action films such as Hard to Kill and Under Siege took the lawmakers around and arranged meetings with Russian security officials. “Seagal opened some doors,” Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican who led the delegation, said on CNN. “We got to meet top people.”

Wait—Steven Seagal? As it turns out, Seagal and Putin pal around quite a bit. The actor has dined with the Russian leader, gone with him to sporting events, and attended state functions. The two “have long been friends and regularly meet each other,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian Itar-Tass News Agency in March. More recently, Seagal has cultivated a side gig as an informal go-between for Moscow and Washington. The state-owned RIA Novosti news service reported Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin asked Seagal to press lawmakers on Capitol Hill to remove barriers to the sale of Russian-made guns in the U.S. “Bizarre is the word that comes to mind,” Clifford Gaddy, an economist at the Brookings Institution who focuses on Russia, said in an e-mail.