Russians often grit their teeth at the way their country is portrayed in Hollywood films: a grim, wintry post-Soviet wasteland peopled with mafia thugs, drunks, and Kremlin megalomaniacs.

In Russia, Gerard Depardieu is treated as something of a prince these days. Yesterday morning, he was delivered to the airport in the provincial city of Saransk in a limousine bedecked with flashing blue lights, enabling him to ignore all traffic regulations. There, the “Russian actor of French origin” as he is now sometimes referred to in local media, stepped ...

Actor Gerard Depardieu says Chechnya is not to blame for the Boston bombing because the suspects had an "American upbringing".

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - French actor Gerard Depardieu said on Tuesday the ethnic Chechen brothers accused of the Boston marathon bombing had been raised American and that residents of the volatile Russian region of Chechnya were not to blame.