Ashton Kutcher Stands by Wife Mila Kunis' Homeland in Ukraine
Ashton Kutcher is showing his support for Ukraine following Russia's invasion last week. The actor shared his opinion on the ongoing unrest with a simple tweet earlier this week. "I stand with Ukraine," he tweeted on Thursday, before retweeting a picture of the Ukrainian flag.
Kutcher's wife of seven years, actress Mila Kunis, was born in Ukraine back when it was still part of the USSR. She moved to the United States when she was just 7 years old. While the former That 70's Show star hasn't voiced her views on the current situation in her home country, she has opened up about her experience leaving Ukraine with her parents to come to the U.S. at various points over the years.
I stand with Ukraine
— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) February 25, 2022
"And then one day, we weren't moving up the street," Kunis recalled during a 2016 appearance on Conan. "We were on a train, and I was like, 'Whoa, we're on a train. Where are we going?' And then we got to Moscow and then we got on a plane, and all of that was very new to me. Like, a train was new. The plane was new. I had Coca-Cola for the first time. The entire experience was very new."
Kunis acknowledged the context of her family's flight, telling people it was something they didn't flaunt at the time. "At that point, it was still, like, at the fall of communism, and we came [on] a refugee visa," Kunis recounted. "It just wasn't something you flaunted."
"I didn't even know what America was," Kunis said. "I was like, 'What could I have done?' And they're like, 'Said the word America.' And I was like, 'Well, that's true.'"
She's also shared her thoughts on Russia's socioeconomic climate before. "Nowadays, if you have money you think Moscow or wherever is great," she told The Telegraph in September 2011. "But that's not the reality of the Russia I grew up with. My parents both had amazing jobs, and I was very lucky. We were not poor when we lived in Russia, whereas most people were very unfortunate. My parents thought that my brother and I would have no future there, though, so we moved to the United States."
She says her parents came into the country with only $250. "That was it. That was all we were allowed to take with us," Kunis said. "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."