Gerard Depardieu denounces US as ‘destroyers’

Gerard Depardieu has launched an anti-American broadside in his latest demonstration of affection for Russia, his adopted country of citizenship.

In comments made at a press conference recorded in Moscow, but broadcast by French radio station France Inter, Depardieu railed at the US as “a people who have constantly destroyed others”.

He added: “They fought each other, destroyed the Indians, after that they perpetrated slavery, then there was the civil war. After that, they were the first to use the atomic bomb... I prefer being Russian.”

He also said: “If the Europeans stopped listening to the Americans, well, I’d be a lot happier.”

Depardieu was given a Russian passport in 2013 after he clashed with French tax authorities.

Depardieu recently announced his intention to leave Italy, where he is currently living, and move to Belarus “because it’s beautiful and the president [Alexander Lukashenko] is a nice guy”.

Lukashenko, whose authoritarian presidency is, notoriously, a hangover from the old Soviet days, was pictured scything grass with the actor in July and has promised $2 million (Dh7.3 million) backing for Depardieu’s planned film about French fighter pilots on the eastern front during the Second World War.