Sean Penn’s mysterious absence from this year’s Oscars ceremony has finally been explained.

Penn won his third Oscar on Sunday night for his role in One Battle After Another, however, he failed to show up to the ceremony.

The mystery surrounding his absence intensified when Kieran Culkin told the auditorium while accepting the award on Penn’s behalf: “Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening — or didn’t want to — so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”

Now, the reason for his absence has been revealed… it turns out the Hollywood star was on an entirely different continent.

Instead of schmoozing with Hollywood royalty, he was instead busy in Ukraine spending time with good friend President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Sean, thanks to you, we know what a true friend of Ukraine is. You have stood with Ukraine since the first day of the full-scale war,” Zelenskyy wrote on X along with a photo of himself and Sean sitting in his office.

“This is still true today,” Zelenskyy continued. “And we know that you will continue to stand with our country and our people.

Penn has been spending a lot of time in Ukraine and offering his assistance since Russia invaded the country in 2022.

Penn even gifted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy an Oscar in 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the two countries went to war.

At last year’s Lumiere Film Festival, Penn talked about his passionate activism and his encounters with Zelensky.

Penn shared his belief that his activism, filmmaking and carpentry are all born from the same impulse.

“I don’t know that I differentiate between getting up in the morning and going to my workshop and building a piece of furniture from going to a movie set and acting or directing a movie, or anything I’ve done working in the NGO space or with the documentary ‘Superpower,’” he said. “It all feels like you’re always looking to be value added. Sometimes you’re not; sometimes you can catch yourself inflaming a situation. You have to weigh risk-benefit on everything – to the situation, not to oneself.”