OREANDA-NEWS  Actor and director Ben Stiller, known for the comedies of the noughties, as well as the "Night at the Museum" franchise, visited Ukraine for humanistic purposes and organized the trip at his own expense. The artist wrote about this on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

Stiller, commenting on publications on social networks that the USAID agency paid him four million dollars for a visit to Kiev, said that he paid for everything with his personal money, and went to a meeting with President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky only for the sake of a good mission.

"An absolute lie. This is information from the Russian media, just fake. I paid for this humanitarian trip out of my own pocket and no one paid me," Ben wrote.

The day before, rumors appeared online that the infamous USAID agency, which has now been criticized in the United States for misuse of the country's budget, paid Hollywood celebrities millions of dollars for their visits to Ukraine in the midst of a special military operation. In addition to Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other stars were mentioned on the list.

Earlier, Zelensky spoke about Stiller's arrival in Ukraine. According to him, the actor visited the city of Irpen, as well as the village of Makarov in the Kiev region.