Leonardo DiCaprio donates £7.6m for his grandmother’s homeland Ukraine

Leonardo DiCaprio has donated £7.6m to Ukraine, which has been fighting a Russian invasion for the past two weeks.

The 47-year-old actor has a personal connection to the war-ridden nation as his maternal grandmother Helene Indenbirken was born in Odesa. She migrated to Germany with her parents in 1917.

DiCaprio was quite close to his grandmother, who according to multiple reports, always supported his acting career.

Indenbirken died at the age of 93 in 2008. She used to accompany DiCaprio to the premieres of many of his films.

According to Polish News, the actor’s donation to Ukraine was announced by the International Visegrad Fund.

The Independent has contacted them for comment.

Several other actors have also donated funds to Ukraine.

Last week, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher said they will match donations of up to $3m (£2.25m) to help supply humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees.

Kunis, who was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, said in a video on Instagram: “The events that have unfolded in Ukraine are devastating. There is no place in this world for this kind of unjust attack on humanity”.

“I have always considered myself an American, a proud American. I love everything this country has done for myself and my family. But today, I have never been more proud to be a Ukrainian.”

Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine on 24 February, describing it as a “special military operation” to disarm the eastern European country and remove leaders who he described as neo-Nazis. Nato and its allies see this as a pretext for an invasion to conquer the entire of Ukraine and install a pro-Russian administration.

The war in Ukraine has forced over two million residents to flee the country, and hundreds have either died or have been injured. This is the fastest exodus of people Europe has seen since the Second World War, officials have said, warning that the war could displace nearly five million people.

Russia has promised to allow five humanitarian corridors to be formed to let people flee major cities under attack by Putin’s forces. The firing of weapons in Ukraine will stop from 7am GMT (10am Moscow time) on Wednesday, Russian news agency Tass said. The corridors will lead out of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered.

To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.