Celebrity network helps Ukraine buy kamikaze drones
Barbra Streisand is part of a group of film and sport stars who have raised hundreds of millions to defy the Kremlin war machine.
Barbra Streisand is better known for crooning pop ballads than as the face of a fundraiser for kamikaze drones. Yet when she agreed to help procure medical aid for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s initiative in September, she soon found herself part of a celebrity network resisting the Kremlin war machine.
The platform, United24, expects to have raised $US300m to help Ukraine by the end of next month and is only $US7m shy of its goal.
It counts Mark Hamill of Star Wars, Andriy Shevchenko, the former Chelsea footballer, Katheryn Winnick, a star of Vikings on Netflix, Oleksandr Usyk, the heavyweight boxing champion, and Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna, among a wide range of ambassadors.
“Ukraine is everything to me – I am coming once a month myself to deliver medical equipment and ambulances with the money I raised,” Shevchenko said. “I’m rebuilding a football stadium for young kids. When Ukrainian refugees start to come back to the country, wives and children, they need some sport and joy in their lives.”
On the one hand, the initiative funds areas that will be comfortable for celebrities such as ambulances, vital medicines and medical equipment, rebuilding hundreds of homes and a children’s football stadium in Irpin, scene of some of Russia’s most gruesome atrocities.
On the other, it plans to purchase helicopters and uncrewed surface vessels laden with explosions that can attack President Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea Fleet.
The aim, it says, is to protect Ukrainians from ships that have fired hundreds of cruise missiles into the country and destroyed thousands of lives, homes and infrastructure objects.
United24 said it caters for each ambassador’s preference, routing their donations to the Ukrainian government in one of three areas: defence and demining, medical aid or infrastructure rebuilding projects. All the money goes to government ministries. Streisand, for example, regularly donates $US24,000 of her own money to medical aid.
“Coming from my Jewish heritage with Ukrainian roots, I feel especially moved by Ukrainians’ fight for freedom,” she told Mr Zelensky last year.
“The capability and courage of the Ukrainian people is an inspiration for all those who promote democracy and fight authoritarianism.”
When asked about the military side of the project, many ambassadors were uncomfortable that the line between charity and warfare had blurred. Only Hamill appears completely at ease.
“This is a simple fairytale of good vs evil. Everyone has a responsibility to do the right thing, not just for yourself but for the good of mankind. That’s why Mr Zelensky refers to Russia as an ‘evil empire’,” he told The Times, promoting autographed Star Wars posters available at the project’s website, u24.gov.ua.
His efforts are focused on buying non-lethal RQ-35 Heidrun reconnaissance drones, he said. “But it seems lopsided: the Russians have many lethal drones and use them to devastating effect. War is hell. I just want to do all I can to the best of my ability, whatever they need me to do.”
He has been criticised for taking a stand. “I get a lot of blowback, as you would expect, there are the extremists in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) wing who don’t want to support Ukraine. I can’t say it doesn’t bother me but I don’t let it influence my response. People ask, ‘does Harrison (Ford) feel this way, does Adam (Driver) feel this way?’ I haven’t spoken to them specifically, but I know they would side with Ukraine. Who’s going to side with Russia apart from the whackos?”
The Times
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