Ukraine has launched investigations against Russian actor Ivan Okhlobystin on suspicion of terrorism.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's Security Service (SBU), Olena Hitlyanska, wrote on Facebook on December 2 that the probe was launched after he obtained a "passport" from Russia-backed separatists in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Russian media reports said on November 30 that Okhlobystin received the passport from separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko.

The reports quoted Okhlobystin as calling the separatist-controlled territory "a fortress of the Russian world" and openly expressing support to the separatists and Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

On December 1, Ukraine's Interior Ministry called on Western countries to impose sanctions against Okhlobystin.

In 2015, the SBU barred him from entering Ukraine, and more than 70 movies and TV shows featuring him were banned in the country.

With reporting by UNIAN