Russia considers the Oscar winner an enemy of the state due to his participation in a Sept. 2017 video that he narrated about the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Deadline reports.   

According to The Washington Post, Russia alleges in its news release that the then 84-year-old actor “recorded a video message accusing Russia of conspiring against the United States and calling for a fight against our country.”

In the 2017 clip, Freeman narrated a PSA for the Committee to Investigate Russia, an assembly established to bring awareness about Moscow’s interference in the U.S. presidential election, The Independent reports.

“We have been attacked. We are at war. Imagine this movie script: a former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his motherland, plots a course for revenge. Taking advantage of the chaos, he works his way up through the ranks of a post-Soviet Russia and becomes president,” Freeman says in the recording. 

“He establishes an authoritarian regime, then he sets his sights on his sworn enemy: the United States,” Freeman continues.

As a result of the clip, Freeman and others were accused of spreading “Russophobia.” 

The Russian Foreign Ministry publicized the list of banned Americans after the country was penalized for invading Ukraine, and it also released a statement. 

“In the context of responding to the constantly imposed anti-Russian sanctions by the United States and in connection with incoming requests about the personal composition of our national ‘stop list,’ the Russian Foreign Ministry publishes a list of American citizens who are permanently banned from entering the Russian Federation,” the statement read, according to Deadline.

“We emphasize that the hostile actions taken by Washington, which boomerang against the United States itself, will continue to receive a proper rebuff. Russian counter-sanctions are forced and aimed at forcing the ruling American regime, which is trying to impose a neo-colonial ‘rules-based world order’ on the rest of the world, to change its behavior, recognizing new geopolitical realities,” the statement continued. 

“Russia does not seek confrontation and is open to honest, mutually respectful dialogue, separating the American people, who are always respected by us, from the U.S. authorities, who incite Russophobia, and those who serve them. It is these people who are included in the Russian ‘black list,'” the statement concluded.