Sean Penn Gets Wartime Oscar From Damaged Ukrainian Rail
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- Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of Ukrainian railways, presented Penn with the makeshift award on Monday, telling him: "You're missing Oscars, so we made this one" and "It's not golden but it's very real and from the bottom of our hearts."
- Penn, 65, won his third Academy Award — best supporting actor for Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another — at Sunday's ceremony in Los Angeles, which he skipped; the film took six Oscars including best director and best picture.
- President Zelenskyy posted a photo of the two meeting in his office on Monday; in 2022 Penn had loaned one of his Oscars to Zelenskyy, saying "This is for you" and asking him to bring it back to Malibu when Ukraine wins the war.
- Penn has visited Ukraine frequently since Russia's full-scale invasion four years ago and directed a 2023 documentary about Zelenskyy.
- Penn was also absent from February's Bafta ceremony, where he won best supporting actor for the same film, making the Kyiv appearance his second straight awards no-show.
Why it matters: Penn's no-show at both major 2026 awards ceremonies — followed by a publicity stunt gift from a wartime rail network — turns a personal absence into a pointed political gesture: a two-time Oscar winner is now using his statuettes as diplomatic props with Kyiv, having already placed one of them in Zelenskyy's office in 2022.
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