Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, banned in Russia: they enter the ‘black list’ of the Kremlin

Ben Stiller, Sean Penn and Volodymyr Zelensky are three actors who are not funny to the Kremlin. The first two for their activism in favor of Ukraine; the last, for heading a government that decided to stay in kyiv and resist an armored offensive on three fronts. Now, months after meeting the Ukrainian president, the Russian Foreign Ministry has placed the two American interpreters on its sanctions list. They will be prohibited from setting foot in Russia, where no Western production company is already showing their films in cinemas and on computers to avoid being singled out.

“It’s a great honor for me, you’re my hero!” Said the actor of Zoolander to Zelensky in kyiv on June 20. Ben Stiller (56 years old) was received by the president after visiting Irpin, one of the places that has suffered the most from the war. “What you have done, the way you have dealt with the country, the world, is really inspiring,” added the interpreter of Something happens with Mary.

Days later it was the turn of Sean Penn (61 years old), who traveled to Ukraine to shoot a documentary. Both interpreters are old acquaintances: their first contact was a Zoom interview made during the pandemic, and by chance they met again on February 24, the day that Putin ordered the advance of his troops on Ukraine. The American filmmaker, who in 2016 caused rivers of ink to flow in Russia for his seven-hour interview with Mexican drug trafficker El Chapo Guzmán, proposed in their third meeting that Zelenski participate in the Oscar awards gala.

The Ukrainian president was a popular comic actor before winning the 2019 elections in a country exhausted by corruption, the power of the oligarchs and the war in Donbas. Interestingly, as a member of the well-known Kvartal group, he made numerous appearances in Russia over the years, some of them before Kremlin propagandists who today accuse kyiv of being “a Nazi regime” to justify an offensive that has cost thousands of deaths and has no a clear horizon.

Actor and producer Sean Penn visiting Ukrainian army positions near the breakaway region of Donetsk, in a photo released by the Ukrainian president’s press office.AP

Other American actors could suffer the same fate as Stiller and Penn and be banned by Russia. Zelensky also received Liev Schreiber (54 years old) and Jessica Chastain (45 years old), while Angelina Jolie (47 years old), actress and special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, paid a surprise visit to Lviv in May.

Not only Hollywood or musicians like the members of Imagine Dragons have shown their support for Ukraine. The fashion firm Balenciaga was one of the first multinationals to position itself clearly in favor of the bombed country and its creative director, Demna, traveled there two weeks after the fighting began, when his fate was not clear. Since then, the designer has campaigned to remember that the conflict continues there, and launched a line of clothing with the blue-yellow flag, a symbol of the sky and the Ukrainian cereal fields. “I know very well the pain they are going through. I have been thinking a lot about how I can help the country and all its refugees to return home, and that is why I focused on the humanitarian action ‘Restore Ukraine’”, he wrote on July 29 on his Instagram profile.

Among Spanish celebrities, chef José Andrés has been one of the most involved in helping the country. The cook went to the border with Poland in March to distribute food to the thousands of fleeing refugees, and his organization World Central Kitchen (WCF), founded in 2010 to help populations in danger, went to many places on the front lines to throw a hand. In April, a missile hit his kitchen in Kharkiv, a Russian-speaking city that is still a Kremlin target more than half a year later.

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Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, banned in Russia: they enter the ‘black list’ of the Kremlin