Three years ago, almost exactly, Angelina Jolie left her role as UNHCR’s Special Envoy. She had worked as special envoy and goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commission on Refugees for more than twenty years. We still don’t know exactly why Jolie left, but I’ve long suspected that she was burned out from humanitarian work combined with all of the bullsh-t Brad Pitt was putting her through in their divorce. She needed to have a few years where she wasn’t visiting refugee camps and she needed to focus on her family. Well, a few weeks ago, Angelina decided to make a quiet trip to Kherson, Ukraine. Kherson is literally the frontline of the war. Her visit didn’t get much attention in the American press, but European outlets talked about it and there were some photos and videos. Now the Hollywood Reporter’s Rambling Reporter highlighted her visit with a piece called “Angelina Jolie Goes to War. For Real.”

Angelina Jolie is no stranger to war zones — she’s filmed in Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya and wherever in the world those winged battles in Maleficent took place — but never before has she ventured to a place so genuinely hazardous. On Nov. 5, the Oscar-winning actress quietly slipped into a part of Ukraine even seasoned war correspondents rarely go — the frontline city of Kherson — for an appearance so unlikely that Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Alisa Orlova initially thought reports of her sighting were “a joke.”

“There are almost daily attacks on Kherson,” Orlova tells Rambling Reporter. “The rockets can hit the city in as little as one minute, maybe 30 seconds. But then the videos started appearing in my feed with [Jolie] in the hospital with children. She really was in Kherson.”

Indeed, she was. Jolie spent the day in a maternity ward and a children’s clinic, sitting on the floor with kids, surrounded by toys. Local outlets reported she traveled as part of a humanitarian aid program, and the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration presented her with a commemorative “Kherson” coin.

“People were grateful that she was not afraid to come,” Orlova says, noting that if Jolie had merely wanted “to do some PR, she could have easily gone to Kyiv, which is much safer.” Still, no good deed goes unpunished, and the trip took an unfortunate turn when one of her drivers was detained near Mykolaiv after the motorcade was stopped at a checkpoint. The man — reportedly of draft age — was taken to a recruitment office despite insisting he was escorting “an important person, a peacekeeper.” Jolie was later seen walking inside the draft office, and the driver was ultimately released. Says Orlova, “There are rumors he has been let go and promised to enlist after her trip, but we don’t know for sure.” Turns out even the Ukrainian army can’t say no to Angelina Jolie.

[From THR]

It’s really incredible that she did this and made a point of going to one of the most dangerous areas of the conflict. I hope this means that Angelina is getting back to humanitarian work and visits to warzones and camps. Angelina also posted photos and videos on her Instagram too.

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Photos courtesy of Cover Images.