Depardieu flies the flag for Putin on television

The French actor turned Russian national Gerard Depardieu has taken to the TV in Russia to nail his colours to the mast. Depardieu told russian television that the country’s opposition is no real alternative. “There are some people, like Kasparov”, he said, “who are very clever, but they are only good for playing chess. Politics is a lot more complicated.” Depardieu went on to defend the Kremlin’s treatment of the Pussy Riot protest punks. “The French are very good at criticising,” he ruminated, “during the Pussy Riot row, for example. But imagine if Pussy Riot had done that in a mosque, we would never have seen them, they would have been burnt alive.” Depardieu was given a Russian passport on January the 6th following a public and bitter clash with the French government over a proposed tax on the super-rich. He has denied seeking to profit from Russia’s 13 percent flat rate income tax, although has yet to specify if he will live there full time.