MOSCOW, December 30. / TASS /. Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to an American writer, former adviser to President Ronald Reagan on the USSR, Suzanne Massie on Thursday, according to the presidential decree.
"Adopt the following persons into the citizenship of the Russian Federation <…> Massie Suzanne Rohrbach, born on January 8, 1931, in the United States of America," the decree says.
By the same decree, Putin gave Russian citizenship to several descendants of Russian emigrants living in France. Among them are 80-year-old Dimitri Korniloff, 71-year-old Serge Alexi (Sergey Alekseevich) Kapnist, 41-year-old Alexander Paul Muruzi and 34-year-old Dimitri Lisette.
Suzanne Massie is an American writer, author of the best-seller ‘Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia’. In the 1980s, she was an informal adviser to President Reagan on the Soviet Union.
In May 2021, Massie asked Putin to grant her Russian citizenship, noting that she had devoted many years of her life to bringing the peoples of Russia and the US closer together. In June, on the sidelines of the Yalta Conference at the Livadia Palace, the American novelist revealed that she needed citizenship to write a book in Russia.