Liz Hurley and Gérard Depardieu's Chechnya adventure: the story so far

To a news report concerning Gerard Depardieu's views on the alleged Boston bombers, and a statement so appallingly controversial that Lost in Showbiz can still scarcely believe it. "Speaking in the southern Russian province of Chechnya, where he is shooting a movie with British actress Elizabeth Hurley, Depardieu said: 'I agree with [Chechen president] Ramzan Kadyrov who said that the Tsarnaev brothers have a Chechen last name, but their upbringing is American.'"

I'm sorry, but WHAT? Tell me I didn't just read that. And yet, there it is in black and white: "where he is shooting a movie with British actress Elizabeth Hurley".

Mine eyes!

For a long time, it has seemed as though the "actress" part of Liz's Twitter biography – "mum, model, actress, bikini designer, organic farmer" – were more of a nod to past glories than an ongoing situation which requires a diplomatic or even military response. Indeed, Lost in Showbiz is chastened to admit it has been some time since it checked into Liz's IMDb page, across which even tumbleweed has blown with increasing sparsity since 2002.

Even so, this column regards itself as something of a Hurley completist. Mostly it's about discovering something new in the classics, of course: a mistimed gasp in Passenger 57, say, or a brutally cudgeled line in Bedazzled. But any new work is obviously a major event, and these sensational claims of a return to the silver screen demand an immediate IMDb visit. There, we have no mention of Turquoise, the movie she is shooting with Depardieu. But bounty of sorts exists in the form of High Midnight, a Hurley picture said to be in the pipeline and whose synopsis runs as follows: "A broken-down sheriff is forced to join forces with an obsessed Victorian vampire-hunter to defeat an undead force consuming a small frontier town in 1892 New Mexico."

Quite how far down the pipeline that will get before Dyno-Rod is summoned I should not like to say, but we seem locked on for Turquoise, given Hurley is already in Grozny. On Tuesday, the Chechen president Instagrammed a picture of the pair of them cosying up to Chanel, his pet white cat.

You probably already know that President Ramzan Kadyrov is a major nut for Instagram, upon which he posts frequent snaps that seem almost adorably kooky until you recall that he is basically a warlord-made-good whose record is so troubling that he beats even Vladimir Putin to confected human-rights awards. Aside from treating his fans to regular pictures of him with tigers and scythes and whatnot, Kadyrov has even picked a cabinet minister from his Instagram followers.

Nevertheless, this week's Hurley bilateral seems the sort of escalation that demands the finest Foreign Office brains be immediately seconded to the situation room. How long before Liz's radically manscaped fiance, Shane Warne, visits her on set in Grozny, and is co-opted as the star of a presidential Instagram in which Kadyrov appears to be hitting him for six? (My feeling is that Ramzan is a superhumanly gifted athlete in the mould of Kim Jong-il – whose first round of golf famously saw him shoot 38 under par, with 11 holes-in-one – and would take six sixes off a single Warne over.)

Then again, perhaps other worlds are already colliding. Having hosted Hurley and Depardieu in the capital on Tuesday, the president's Instagram reveals that Wednesday was reserved for honouring another guest – none other than Lost in Showbiz untouchable Steven Seagal. Oh Steven! Incapable of making a good decision where the former eastern bloc is concerned, the On Deadly Ground legend seems to have been in town to burnish Kadyrov's hardman aura. There are snaps of Seagal dining, and posing with Kadyrov's kids, and a tiger, and some T-shirted heavies who are possibly the cabinet or something. "I told him I watch his movies and I like them a lot," Kadyrov explained. "Nobility. Willpower. Honour. Qualities characteristic of Chechens. So we can say he is almost a Chechen!"

Of course, the key question is: have Liz, Gerard, Steven and Ramzan met up as a foursome? Are the out-of-towners maybe even having drinks with the prez tonight? The possibility hangs in the air like a malarial hallucination.

What we do know is a little more about Turquoise. Liz is going to play Depardieu's Russian old flame – ZOMG she's going to do a Russian accent! – and she has insisted the film is "an opportunity" to visit Chechnya. "We've made quite an invasion," she declared to reporters, almost as though the cast were Russia or the Mongols, "but we intend to make a great movie."

With Hurley, it's always about the work. However, she may wish to bear in mind the backlash suffered by other stars who have palled about with Kadyrov. A couple of years ago, the Chechen leader shipped over a flotilla of stars to help him celebrate his birthday with an extravagant televised concert, one of whom was Hilary Swank. Having initially claimed to have done her "provisory [sic] research" on his human-rights record, Swank eventually professed her attendance was a terrible mistake.

So there you have it. Hilary Swank is a multimillionaire, two-time Oscar winner who will do almost anything for an appearance fee. But – and fire up the Meat Loaf soundtrack – she won't do that. No she won't do that. And if some under-researched minion's error means she does end up doing that, then said under-researched minion will find their desk in the lift. I should tell you that Hilary sacked her manager and most of her management team in the wake of her Chechen jaunt.

As for Liz – yet to be recognised by the Academy – there are vague hints of a gathering PR storm. Once the Instagrams of her with the president surfaced, a reporter from the Independent tried to cheapen her artistic commitment with a question about Kadyrov, forcing her to declare: "I'm only here to talk about the movie." Mmm. The form book suggests that once the reviews of her performance come out, Liz will only want to talk about human-rights abuses in Chechnya. But until that moment, this situation in the North Caucusus remains developing, and one upon which we'll keep the closest of eyes.