Actress and U.N. humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday.
During her visit, Jolie hastily exited a train station “as air-raid sirens went off” in the city, according to a video tweeted by Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist for Bellingcat, and by Reuters.
In the video Grozev shared on Twitter, which has been viewed more than 200,000 times, the actress appears to pick up speed as she walks out of the station with a group of people. Sirens can be heard in the background.
Angelina Jolie had to be rushed to a bomb shelter as air-raid sirens went off in Lviv. pic.twitter.com/dOnLcQsp6d
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) April 30, 2022
“In one of the medical institutions, she has visited children who suffered from a missile strike by the Russian military on the Kramatorsk train station. She was very moved by their stories. One girl was even able to tell Ms. Jolie about her dream privately,” Kozytskyy said.
(Washington Post) There was nothing special about Maya Pidhoretska’s day as she was grabbing coffee at a local cafe in Lviv, Ukraine. That changed, she said, when actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie made a surprise trip to the western Ukrainian city on Saturday, in support of Ukraine more than two months into the Russian invasion.
“I just went to have coffee,” she wrote on Facebook with a video of what happened. She jokingly wrote, “Just Angelina Jolie.”
Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told The Washington Post in an email that Jolie was not in Lviv on business for the organization.
“Angelina Jolie is traveling to the region in her personal capacity, and UNHCR has no involvement in this visit,” Ghedini-Williams wrote.
Angelina Jolie popped into Lviv today and spent some time at the railway station meeting displaced people. pic.twitter.com/734EKQrijG
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) April 30, 2022
“She was very moved by (the children’s) stories,” Kozytskyy wrote. “One girl was even able to privately tell Ms. Jolie about a dream she’d had.”
He said Jolie also visited a boarding school and “she promised she would come again.”
“The visit was a surprise to us all,” he wrote. “Plenty of people who saw Ms. Jolie in the Lviv region could not believe that it was really her. But since Feb. 24, Ukraine has shown the entire world that there are plenty of incredible things here.”
Wonderful post