Ashton Kutcher shares support for Mila Kunis' native Ukraine

Words by Emma Dooney

(Image credit: Getty)

Mila Kunis lived in the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi with her family until she was seven.

Ashton Kutcher has shared his support for Ukraine, the home country of his wife, Mila Kunis, amid the ongoing crisis.

The Hollywood actor took to Twitter on Friday to make a simple statement on Russia's invasion of the Eastern European nation, telling his 17.1m followers, "I stand with Ukraine."

The four-worded message, which has garnered over 14.8k likes, was followed by a retweet of the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. Several other celebrities have followed the 44-year-old's lead, including Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Ashton has been married to actress Mila Kunis, who was born in the city of Chernivtsi in 1983, since 2015. The Bad Moms star's native town is now part of Ukraine, but it belonged to Communist Russia until 1991.

Mila Kunis

Mila moved to the US with her family when she was seven after her parents decided that there was 'no future' for her and her older brother, Michael, in the former Soviet state. The Kunises landed on the American East Coast in 1990 with just $250 to spend, having abandoned everything in Ukraine to pursue a better life.

"That was all we were allowed to take with us," Mila told the Telegraph in 2011. "My parents had given up good jobs and degrees, which were not transferable. We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at school in L.A."

Mila also detailed her "frightening" experience of enrolling in an American school without any English. At the time, she only spoke her native language of Russian.

“I blocked it out," she said. "I don’t have any memories. Apparently, my parents tell me, I cried every morning and when I came back from school. When I wrote my essay for college, it was about imagining what it was like being blind and deaf at the age of seven, because that’s what it felt like.”

It's unknown whether or not Mila, who today lives in Los Angeles with Ashton and their two children, Wyatt and Dimitri, has family members still based in Ukraine. She returned to the country for the first time in 2017, hoping to retrace her roots by visiting her childhood home. Unfortunately, the long-awaited trip wasn't exactly what Mila had expected it to be.

"There’s a part of you that wants to feel something towards [the place]. I had nothing," she admitted. "We landed and Ashton was like, 'No?' [and I was like], 'Yeah, nothing. I got nothing for you, babe.'" It didn't help that, when the couple attempted to check out Mila's old house, they were quickly turned away.

"I knocked on the door because we really wanted to look inside," she recalled. "And [the new owner] was like, ‘No!’ She did not care. I said, ‘I used to live here when I was little, my parents are here [with me].’ She wouldn’t even open the door. The whole experience was very humbling."

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