Sean Penn continues to work on behalf of the efforts of Community Organized Relief Effort, the aid organization he founded in 2010, to help the people of Ukraine who are fleeing the country amid Russia’s violent attacks.
“I was in Lviv, Ukraine today with CORE Co-Founder and CEO @annyounglee and our team, strategizing with local governance & NGO’s to scale up our in-country programs,” the two-time Oscar winner said Monday on social media. “Had a very good meeting with Gov. Maksym Kozytskyy.”
In addition to his humanitarian work with CORE, which he created after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Penn is making a documentary of the events in Ukraine with Vice Media. He has been so passionate about his work that, last week, he publicly demanded that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky be invited to speak at the Oscars. If the leader wasn’t, Penn vowed to “smelt” his Best Actor awards for 2008’s Milk and 2003’s Mystic River. While Zelensky wasn’t part of the ceremony, Mila Kunis, whose family is from Ukraine, spoke out on behalf of her compatriots for “find[ing] strength to keep fighting through unimaginable darkness,” which was followed by a moment of silence for the besieged country. Penn gave no indication of Oscar smelting in his social media on Monday.
Penn’s latest update was the second of a pair of posts he’s made on Instagram in the past week. He rarely uses the platform — those were his second and third posts on his account — but has turned to it to show what’s happening on the ground. While the Monday post captured his view of tents as he looked out the window of a moving vehicle, the earlier one showed a very young girl fascinated by the bubbles someone was blowing toward her. Penn noted in the caption that it had been posted with permission of the girl’s mother after being taken at a shelter for refugees on Ukraine’s western border.
The video was shot by Penn’s estranged wife, Leila George. Although the Australian actress filed for divorce from Penn in October 2021, she is often still alongside him in his efforts. And she was in Lyiv with him, urging support for refugees.
