By Roselle Chen
(Portal) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been battling a Russian invasion since February, is being transformed into an action figure by a product design firm in Brooklyn, New York.
FCTRY launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund production less than two weeks ago. It reached its $30,000 funding goal in just three hours and has since raised over $120,000. For every figurine sold, $1 will go to Ukraine in the campaign, which ends Friday.
A 6-inch (15 cm) clay prototype of the Zelenskiy action figure, sculpted by Seattle artist Mike Leavitt, is mass-produced in China from plastic. It is expected to be delivered by March.
“The way we portrayed him in the campaign is ‘the unlikely hero,'” said Jason Feinberg, Chief Executive and Creative Director of FCTRY.
“He’s the perfect leader for this moment, just this super inspirational character. He has this real strength that comes across, but it’s humble and he kind of represents the opposite of everything we associate with politics.”
Zelenskyy, 44, a former comedian, came to power three years ago and vowed to end the war with Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
A shrewd communicator, he has received worldwide praise for standing up to Russia’s devastating invasion of his country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched troops to Ukraine on February 24 in a so-called “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” the country.
(Reporting by Roselle Chen; Editing by Richard Chang)