U.S. singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose grandparents emigrated from Ukraine to the United States, says she held a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy where she pledged to donate to the United24 platform that Kyiv has set up to accept money from around the world as it fights to repel Russia’s invasion.
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“I have been moved by the resilience and courage of the Ukrainian people and his inspirational leadership,” Streisand said in a tweet accompanied by a picture of Zelenskiy during their phone call on September 22.
UNITED24 was launched by Zelenskiy as a venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine. The website said that funds donated “will be transferred to the official accounts of the National Bank of Ukraine and allocated by assigned ministries to cover the most pressing needs.”
The 80-year-old Streisand, who said she had pledged $24,000 to the fund, has been critical of Russia since it launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February.
“My paternal grandparents emigrated from Ukraine and my heart breaks for the courageous people there fighting this Russian invasion. Putin’s propaganda about “denazification” as a rationale is one of the great lies of this century, she wrote on February 24, just hours after the invasion was launched.
Putin has said repeatedly that part of the reason he launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine even though Zelenskiy, who was democratically elected, is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Streisand, who has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, has won 10 Grammy awards for her music and two Oscar awards for her acting.