Acclaimed actor and filmmaker Sean Penn is calling on wealthy individuals to help purchase fighter aircraft for Ukraine’s depleted air force as the war-torn country defends itself against an unprovoked Russian invasion.
The two-time Academy award-winning actor made a public plea on social media on March 31 asking for at least $500 million to purchase two squadrons of U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 fighter jets along with missiles for “Ukrainian aviators” who could be quickly trained within the span of “three weeks.”
“One billionaire could end this war in Ukraine. Of course there are add-ons in arming & maintaining creative runways, etc., but seems worth a think,” Penn said on March 31.
Ukraine’s Air Force thanked him for his fundraising effort the following day saying his call to procure the “modern aircraft…will help protect our skies, and people from the bombs of the Russian occupiers.”
On the same day that Penn, who is the founder of the CORE Charity Foundation, tweeted about the need to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, the nation’s Air Force said that the country’s ground defenses won’t win the war.
Calling it a “myth,” the Air Force tweeted a thread of 16 passages explaining that “air superiority is the deciding factor in this war. Air superiority has played a key role in all wars since WWII.”
Penn was filming a documentary about the ongoing war with Russia when Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin ordered a renewed invasion of the neighboring country on Feb. 24.
He eventually left Ukraine through Poland and his crisis response charity group has been providing “immediate needs” in Poland and Romania to Ukrainians fleeing the war.
According to IndieWire, Penn had been filming about the ongoing war since November 2021.
On the third day of Russia’s renewed invasion, he gave a statement on Feb. 26: “Already a brutal mistake of lives taken and hearts broken, and if he doesn’t relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have risen as historic symbols of courage and principle. Ukraine is the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.”
No one responded from California-based CORE to Kyiv Post requests for comment.
In 2014, Russia forcibly seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and occupied parts of the easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The ongoing war is the biggest conflict on the European continent since World War II and also caused the biggest migration of people and humanitarian crisis.
