WASHINGTON, January 24 (RIA Novosti) – Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger has offered his support for anti-government protesters in Ukraine who have been locked in a violent standoff with security forces.
“I want to send a message to the people of the Ukraine to let them know that I wish them all the best of luck in their peaceful struggle for democracy and freedom,” Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, said in a YouTube video posted Friday.
Schwarzenegger, who played Ivan Danko – a hard-jawed Soviet cop with a Ukrainian last name – in the 1988 film “Red Heat,” ended the short video by flashing a peace sign at the camera and saying “peace.”
The video was posted Friday on the YouTube channel of boxing champion and Ukrainian opposition figurehead Vitaly Klitschko, leader of the political party Udar, and his brother Wladimir, who is also a boxing champion.
Dozens of demonstrators and riot police have been injured in the wave of violence that hit the capital Kiev this week after Ukraine’s government swiftly enacted laws severely restricting protests, and authorities have confirmed that two protesters have been killed.
Schwarzenegger, whose films have enjoyed wide popularity in Russia and other former Soviet republics ever since the twilight of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, swapped shirtless photographs on Twitter with Wladimir Klitschko last year in a muscle-bound display of mutual admiration.
Schwarzenegger’s words of encouragement for Ukrainian protesters are unlikely to endear him to officials in Moscow, who have accused the West of meddling in Ukraine’s affairs ever since anti-government protests broke out in November.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who showed Schwarzenegger around during the erstwhile California governor’s visit to Russia in 2010, said Moscow wants to ensure that foreign countries are not seeking “to deprive Ukraine of its sovereignty.”
Medvedev, who was Russia’s president at the time of the visit, told Schwarzenegger he could offer him a job as the mayor of Moscow if the actor-cum-politician had Russian citizenship.
