‘You are my hero,’ Ben Stiller tells Zelenskyy during Ukraine visit

Kyiv, Jun 21 (EFE).- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Hollywood actor Ben Stiller during the latter’s visit to Ukraine as the United Nations refugee agency’s goodwill ambassador.

“You are my hero. What you have done, (…) it’s really inspiring,” the actor, director and screenwriter told the Ukrainian president during an event to mark the World Refugee Day late on Monday.

The “Zoolander” actor said he was impressed with how Zelenskyy had led the country and its citizens, and underlined how the leader left behind his comedy career for it, akin to his own professional trajectory.

Zelenskyy responded by saying he was honored to meet Stiller and welcoming him to Ukraine, apart from insisting that he had kept track of the actor’s Hollywood career.

Stiller and UNHCR’s Ukraine representative Karolina L Billing visited the presidential office after taking a tour of some of the neighborhoods in the Kyiv region that had been occupied by the Russian military.

These included the residential areas of Irpin, where the envoys spoke with those who had survived the occupation, Zelenskyy’s official website reported.

Referring to the destruction caused by the war, Stiller said that “you see it on TV, you see it on social media, (but) it’s something else to actually see it and feel it and then to talk to people.”

“What you saw in Irpin is definitely dreadful. But it is even worse to just imagine what is happening in the settlements that are still under temporary occupation in the east,” Zelenskyy responded.

The UN goodwill ambassador and the Ukrainian leader discussed the needs of the temporarily displaced population within the country, along with the refugees in Poland, who Stiller had met on Sunday.

Zelenskyy and the UN delegation also talked about how to establish greater cooperation between Ukrainian authorities and the international body. EFE

rml/ia