How Zelenskyy got Luke Skywalker and Bear Grylls to fight Russia: The inside story

Everyone in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office was crying.

The Ukrainian president and football legend Andriy Shevchenko fell into each other’s arms, unable to find words for their perilous predicament.

Both knew they were caught in a fight that would define their lives.

Shevchenko, one of Ukraine’s greatest-ever athletes, was in the office last May to become the first ambassador of Zelenskyy’s fundraising platform United24. The Ukrainian president was desperate to tackle Russia’s lethal onslaught, not just on the battlefield — but in the fight for hearts and minds around the world.

Shevchenko was first. Luke Skywalker, British adventurer Bear Grylls and tennis superstar Elina Svitolina were among many more who followed.

This is the inside story of how Ukraine’s leadership used celebrities and pop culture to fight back against Russia’s brutal invasion.

The first miracle

Ukraine’s millennial Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, put in charge of the initiative by Zelenskyy, approached former magazine editor Yaroslava Gres in the early days of the war with an idea. Kyiv should set up the world’s first governmental fundraising platform.

It would be called United24, a name coined by the president, and it had a singularly bold plan: Unite the “entire civilized world” behind Ukraine, Zelenskyy said.

United24 would also seek to increase donations to Ukraine and ensure that cash was distributed efficiently and transparently. In the beginning it was “a big challenge,” Fedorov told POLITICO in an interview.

While Zelenskyy’s backing lent gravitas and attention to the project, United 24’s secret sauce lies elsewhere: Gres and her platoon of young, innovative creative pros. 

Gres, once the youngest editor of Ukraine’s Hello! Magazine, had no experience in large-scale fundraising when she was tapped to head the initiative — but, regardless, it was a no-brainer for her.

Shortly after Fedorov approached her, a Zoom meeting was set up with Zelenskyy. Seeing the president with his increasingly haggard face was another emotional moment, Gres recalled in an interview with POLITICO.

She vowed to Zelenskyy she would do everything she could to make his idea a success.

And snagging Shevchenko “was United24s first miracle,” Gres said.

Information battlefield

From day one, United24 has thrown itself into the fight with single-minded intensity, working around the clock.

“In one year I have taken one-and-a-half days off,” Gres said, adding that her whole team, which has grown from five to 12 people and is tasked with bringing in tens of millions of dollars, frequently works from 7 a.m. until 2 a.m. the next morning.

The long hours have been worth it, though, thanks to the number of prominent global names who have signed up to help Ukraine’s cause in the information battlespace.

Shevchenko was joined by an army of celebrities who have not only sent strong one-off messages of support — like actor Julia Roberts, and Hollywood directors Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson — but others who have committed to ambassadorial roles, such as Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill and adventurer Bear Grylls.

Ukraine’s leadership has been thrilled with the success of its program.

The platform is run by some of the “best creative professionals in our country,” according to Fedorov, who also said that to keep global attention from waning, they constantly have to develop creative new projects and campaigns.

“Everything is interrelated,” Fedorov said. By getting its citizens to become part of Ukraine’s coalition of the willing, it is also possible to influence governments, he added.

Experts have also been wowed by Ukraine’s external communications as it faces down the Russian invasion.

They are “so good and so fast,” said Swedish researcher Ivar Ekman, who recently co-authored a report on Ukraine’s strategic comms. That comes, in his view, from society’s common urge to fight the Russian threat by all means possible.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year it threatened to topple Kyiv in days. But after more than a year, the capital is still in Ukraine’s hands, though Russian attacks and heavy bombardment have left some Ukrainian cities in ruins and thousands dead. With neither side making any decisive advances in recent months, there is no imminent end in sight as fighting continues relentlessly on Ukraine’s southeastern flank.

Desperation

United24 is the perfect example of how the country’s strategic communication works, Ekman said, adapting to online culture and working to trigger responses by using humor and emotion.

But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for United24.

A desperate plea for cash donations after Kyiv was blitzed in a Russian bombardment last October went unrewarded. Gres said it was a lesson that begging wasn’t the optimal strategy for United 24.

We won’t plead for money, said Gres, but instead United24 wants people to think of themselves as being part of the “great Ukrainian victory.” Attracting celebrities from as many different countries and backgrounds as possible is a key part of that messaging.   

“It’s an inspiration to everyone,” Star Wars legend Hamill, who has become an active supporter of the platform, said in an earlier interview with POLITICO. He added that “I love these people, they are all so relatable.”

Every day United24 comes up with new fundraising ideas, like selling Star Wars posters signed by Hamill or bracelets made from steel manufactured at Mariupol’s Azovstal plant, which was battered for months by Russian troops. The latest was the release of a music video by Imagine Dragons filmed in Ukraine in cooperation with United 24. These efforts have brought in more than €325 million in one year — and United24 isn’t stopping there.

Fedorov compared their current lives to those of marathon runners. “We’re trying to balance our physical condition in order to always have energy to keep running and keep fighting,” he said.

The platform celebrated its one-year anniversary on May 5 with a number of its ambassadors traveling to Kyiv to join Shevchenko in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Zelenskyy.

“Miracles keep on happening every day now,” said Gres.