Moment Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie runs for cover in Lviv as air raid warnings blare

2.1k

View
comments

Movie star Angelina Jolie has been rushed to safety amid fears of an imminent rocket attack while on a visit to the western city of Lviv in Ukraine. 

Jolie, 46, drew attention as a video emerged of her walking briskly with an entourage as an air raid siren went off.

As the group was filmed walking away to safety, a female member turned to the camera and said ‘please, no more’. 

The actress herself took time to wave to the camera and insisted ‘I’m okay’ when asked.

Jolie has worked as a special envoy for the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency for many years, but the specifics of her trip to Ukraine are unclear.

Lviv has been under attack from the Russian army in recent weeks and earlier this month, a missile attack on the city left at least seven people dead.

Earlier, Ukrainian Maya Pidhorodetska posted another video of the famous actress and filmmaker on Facebook.

‘Nothing special. Just Lviv. I just went to have coffee. Just Angelina Jolie,’ she wrote in Ukrainian after filming the actress, who waved to her from the counter. 

‘Ukraine is simply supported by the whole world.’

In Pidhorodetska’s clip, Jolie was seen happily talking with locals in Lviv while wearing casual clothes.

Fans spotted her in the Ukrainian city, greeting Jolie as Russian forces gathered in the east of the country for a renewed assault.

Footage taken earlier in the day shows her singing autographs for fans and sharing conversations with several local residents.

Lviv’s regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said Jolie – who has been a UNHCR Special Envoy for Refugees since 2011 – had come to speak with displaced people who have found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April.

The attack in the eastern Ukrainian city appeared to deliberately target a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a looming Russian offensive, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more.

‘She was very moved by (the children´s) stories,’ Kozytsky 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, talk with students and took photos with them, adding ‘she promised she would come again.’

In February, Jolie spoke about the war in Ukraine in a post to her 12.7 million Instagram followers.

She wrote: ‘Like many of you, I’m praying for the people in Ukraine.

‘My focus along with my @refugees colleagues is that everything possible is done to ensure the protection and basic human rights of those displaced, and refugees in the region.

‘We have already seen reports of casualties and people starting to flee their homes to seek safety.

‘It is too soon to know what will happen, but the significance of this moment – for the people of Ukraine, and for the international rule of law – cannot be overstated.’

‘The visit was a surprise to us all,’ wrote Lviv’s regional governor on his Telegram channel. 

‘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.’ 

According to Kozytsky, Jolie also met with evacuees arriving at Lviv’s central railway station, as well as with Ukrainian volunteers providing the new arrivals with medical help and counseling.

During the visit to the station, Jolie met volunteers working with the displaced, who told her that each of the psychiatrists on duty spoke to about 15 people a day. Many of those in the station are children aged from two to 10, according to volunteers.

‘They must be in shock… I know how trauma affects children, I know just having somebody show how much they matter, how much their voices matter, I know how healing that is for them,’ she said in reply.

The United Nations refugee agency says more than 12.7 million people have fled their homes in the past two months, which represents around 30 per cent of Ukraine’s pre-war population. 

Last month, in her role as special envoy, Jolie also visited Yemen, where millions of people have been displaced by war.

But she is not the first American celebrity to land in Ukraine during the conflict.

American actor Sean Penn was met with the country’s president and attending government press briefings as part of a VICE documentary he is filming.

When Kyiv was under assault, Penn and his team walked miles to the Polish border.

The actor, 61, said both he and his film crew decided to abandon their car and pursue on foot after seeing the thousands of Ukrainian residents fleeing for safety, with queues stretching for miles. 

Penn described how cars were filled with women and children, with their only possession of value being the vehicle they were travelling in.

The documentary is a VICE Studios production, ‘in association with VICE World News and Endeavor Content,’ according to a spokesman for the media group.

In a translated Facebook post, the Ukrainian government said it was grateful for Sean being there and he was lauded as being more courageous than Western leaders.

Although the majority of the fighting has shifted to the east of the country, Ukrainian cities in the West such as Lviv are still under bombardment from Russian missile attacks.

On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said the bodies of more than 1,000 civilians have been retrieved from areas around Kyiv, and they are working with French investigators to document alleged war crimes.

Forensic tests carried out on civilian corpses dumped in mass graves show women were raped before being brutally killed, it was revealed on Monday.

Dozens of autopsies have been carried out on mutilated corpses from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka, with many showing signs of torture and multiple bullet holes in the back.

One coroner north of Kyiv said it is difficult to find signs of rape and sexual abuse because the bodies ‘are in such bad shape’.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented ‘the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there’, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

In the same town, 25 women aged 14 to 25 were kept in a basement and systematically raped, with nine of the women becoming pregnant in a case now recorded by human rights commissioner Lyudmila Denisova.