Mickey Rourke calls on Vladimir Putin to stop war
Mickey Rourke has called on Vladimir Putin to "stop all this s***" in Ukraine.
The 69-year-old actor famously met the Russian president in 2014, but has moved to distance himself from the controversial politician and admitted he is concerned about the "terrible, bad things" he has been doing since invading his neighbouring country earlier this year after seeing some hard-hitting photos of the citizens affected by the war.
Mickey said: "That [meeting] was 2014. I just want to make that clear...
"‘I saw a guy, an image of a man who was looking at a hole, at a ditch.
"I put myself in the position, he was looking for his brother and that kind of struck home with me and bothered me a lot and made me think [Putin’s] doing really terrible, bad things and I wish some kind of little bell would ring in his head or heart and he’ll wake up and just stop all this.
"I saw a picture of a man, an old man laying shot on him on a bicycle and the old woman shot on a bicycle."
And the 'Expendables' star grew emotional as he recalled how "bothered" he had felt when he saw a photo of a man with a kitten.
He added: "But the image that bothered me the most, I saw this old man old in a little grey kitten and the old survived his house being bombed.
"He lost five family members and the only thing he had, it’s kind of hard for me to talk about it, the only thing he had was this little grey kitty.
"I looked at that image… and I said how can I have anything to worry about? Losing a movie? Or I’m having a bad day?
"I’m looking at this old guy holding a little kitty that crawled out from the rubble and that’s all he had, he lost five family members."
The 'Wrestler' actor recalled a "heart breaking" moment when Putin invited him to visit "a home that took care of little, tiny children that had incurable cancer" in St Petersburg and admitted that has left him even more baffled about the war because he felt the Russian president was "genuinely concerned" about the youngsters and showed himself to be "empathetic".
Speaking to Piers Morgan on TalkTV, he said: "That was really heart breaking to go to and I was talking to all these little kids and I remember I gave a rosary of mine to one of the little girls.
"And I looked over at Vladimir and I could see somebody that was genuinely concerned about where we were and someone who was empathetic and he was there for a sincere reason.
"That’s the thing that blows my mind, because it’s like two brother countries and I don’t understand what he wants.
"Not only combatants are getting killed but old people are getting killed, young people are getting killed, schools are getting targeted, hospitals are getting targeted.
"All that is not right."
