UKRAINE WAR:

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued an urgent appeal asking Hollywood actors to stop sending him their Academy Award statuettes.

In a live speech broadcast from Kyiv, President Zelenskyy said US actor Sean Penn’s decision to hand over one of his two Oscars for the duration of the war with Russia had sparked a deluge of the awards arriving at his presidential palace. (main picture)

“I feared this would happen,” President Zelenskyy said. “I just knew as soon as Penn took his Oscar out of his carry bag that every other overpaid, egotistical, barely talented hack actor in Hollywood would seek to gain the same sort of cheap publicity for themselves.

“I mean, what are we supposed to do with all these Academy Awards? Throw them at the Russians?

“Really? A fucking gold statuette? We are war here people! If you want to send anything, send guns, bombs, tanks, or money.”

President Zelenskyy is also understood to be concerned about the propaganda value Russia may seek to gain from Penn’s donation.

In off-camera remarks he expressed his concern that the Oscar given to him by Penn was the best actor award for the 2008 Gus Van Sant-directed biopic Milk about assassinated gay San Francisco city councillor Harvey Milk.

“I was hoping it would be for Mystic River,” President Zelenskyy was reportedly heard saying before the live broadcast began.

“Now that’s a film! Directed by Clint Eastwood no less. But Milk? You don’t think Putin’s going to make propaganda hell for me having an Oscar for a film about a gay man on my mantel?”