Robert De Niro first visited Moscow in February 1982, on the eve of filming Emil Loteanu's "Anna Pavlova", in a cameo as the ballerina's impresario Sol Hurok

Robert De Niro first visited Moscow in February 1982, on the eve of filming Emil Loteanu's "Anna Pavlova", in a cameo as the ballerina's impresario Solomon Yurok. The participation of a Hollywood star might have secured the film a release in the United States, but the officials of Goskino did not approve the actor on account of his "ideologically harmful" role in "The Deer Hunter", which Soviet officials deemed ideologically harmful.

Mikhail Kozakov saw De Niro during this visit and left the following recollection:

Moscow, the year 1982, February. Snow flurries outside the window. A man of short stature comes down the stairs, his head cropped close, down to the skin, very much like some Caucasian. I was dumbfounded: it really was Robert De Niro in person. Robert was young and brilliant, at the zenith of his world fame. And I, we — Regina, Andrey Mironov, Oleg Yankovsky, Ilyusha Averbakh, Nikita Mikhalkov — drank with the American star more than once and held all manner of conversations, some of them quite interesting. For us it was especially interesting, since the "iron curtain" still pressed down upon the earth, and we were, as it were, peeping through unnoticed chinks that had suddenly opened up.

Larisa Golubkina recalled how the actor came to visit Lyudmila Maksakova with his head shaved bald, shocking those present.

A year later he visited the Soviet capital once more, this time as a guest of the Moscow Film Festival.

De Niro mixed with many Soviet actors during his visits, but the most friendly relations he built were with Oleg Yankovsky, whom he had met during the filming of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" and Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia". At De Niro's request a meeting with Tarkovsky was arranged for him, attended by Yankovsky, who was at that moment working under Tarkovsky. They kept in touch for about 27 years.

De Niro visited Moscow for the third time in 1987, when he headed the jury of the Moscow International Film Festival.

At the 20th Moscow International Film Festival in 1997, De Niro was presented with an honorary prize "For Contribution to the Development of Cinematic Art", as were Andrey Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve.

He later visited Moscow in 2009, opening the Nobu restaurant on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, and in 2015, at the opening of another restaurant from the same venture:

In June 2019 he appeared in a video accusing the Russian authorities of interfering in the American elections