Oscar-winner Sean Penn skips Academy Awards ceremony to visit Zelensky in Kyiv

2026.03.16 17:50 American actor Sean Penn walks down a street in Kyiv on Monday amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP Sean Penn, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for One Battle After Another on Sunday, was in Ukraine on Monday where he met President Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of support for the war-torn country. An Agence France-Presse reporter saw the Mystic River star getting out of a black car in central Kyiv earlier on Monday, wearing sunglasses and carrying a box of cigarettes. Penn, a vocal advocate for Ukraine who has visited the country several times, on Sunday won his third acting Oscar but was not at the ceremony. “We can say that he’s in Ukraine but it’s his personal visit; that’s how he sees it, that he needs to be in Ukraine. He just wants to support Ukraine,” a senior Ukrainian official said. Penn, who co-directed a 2023 documentary about Zelensky – met the Ukrainian president on Monday. “Sean, thanks to you, we know what a true friend of Ukraine is,” Zelensky said on social media, posting a picture of the pair in the president’s office. “You have stood with Ukraine since the first day of the full-scale war. This is still true today,” Zelensky said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, talks to Penn in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday. Photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP In an interview with Agence France-Presse in February, Zelensky listed One Battle After Another among his most recently watched films and said he “liked it”. A second source said the actor was also “planning to go to the front” in eastern Ukraine. The documentary Penn co-directed, an admiring portrait of Zelensky about his rise from comedian to war leader when Russia invaded in 2022, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2023. In 2025, Penn and musician Bono, from rock band U2, made an impassioned plea at the Cannes Film Festival for the West to stand by Ukraine, posing for pictures on the red carpet with Ukrainian soldiers.

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