Daryl Hannah gave a shoutout to Ukraine Sunday night at the Oscars, the first overtly political moment of the evening.
Before the “Kill Bill” actress presented the Best Editing award to “Anora” writer/director Sean Baker, she simply said the phrase, “Slava Ukraine.”
It is the battle cry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which have been at war for three years since the Russian invasion in 2022.
The phrase has been used frequently on social media to show empathy with the Eastern European country since the tense meeting in the Oval Office between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. president Donald Trump.
During the meeting, Vice President JD Vance chastised Zelenskyy for not thanking America for its financial and military aid over the last three years, calling the wartime leader “disrespectful.”
Prior to the contentious meet-up of the heads of state, Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator,” a term he later told reporters he did not remember using.
Trump and his newly installed Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, have recently refused to admit that Russia started the war by invading Ukraine.
During an interview on Fox News Sunday last week, Hegseth dodged the question of who began the ongoing hostilities: “It’s fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.”
Hegseth told host Shannon Bream, “Standing here and saying, ‘You’re good, you’re bad; you’re a dictator, you’re not a dictator; you invaded, you didn’t.’ It’s not useful. It’s not productive.”
A few other acceptance speeches early in the evening could be construed as making a statement on the current tense political situation as well. Gints Zilbalodis, who won Best Animated Feature Film for “Flow,” said, “We have to get along, we’re all in the same boat,” echoing the film’s premise of a group of animals somehow working together to survive a catastrophic flood.
In her speech, Best Supporting Actress winner Zoe Saldaña thanked her parents, who are immigrants, and said she was grateful she was able to speak Spanish in “Emilia Pérez.”
