New Delhi: As Russia invades Ukraine, sending the entire world into a tizzy as people are hooked to all the latest news from the conflict zone, all attention is now centered on one person and the moves he makes. The man at the helm in Ukraine is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian who is on the world stage trying to pull his country through an existential crisis.
Zelenskyy became the president of Ukraine in 2019. Until days before the election, he had no party affiliation and no proper advisers’ team. He ran no election rallies or campaign events in person, but used only social media to put across his points mainly centered around corruption in the country. A significant online following gave Zelenskyy a solid electoral base, and this resulted in him getting a landslide victory over incumbent president Petro Poroshenko in the second round of the 2019 presidential election.
Here is a look at the life and career of the 44-year-old leader.
Had Licence To Practise Law But Zelenskyy Chose A Different Path
Born on January 25, 1978, to Jewish parents in Kryvyy Rih, Ukraine, in the erstwhile USSR, Zelenskyy graduated from Kyiv National Economic University, with a law degree, according to the Ukraine president’s official website.
His family had relocated to Mongolia for four years when Zelenskyy was a small child. He started school after they returned to Kryvyy Rih.
He entered Kryvyy Rih Economic Institute, the local campus of the Kiev National Economic University, in 1995 and graduated with a law degree in 2000.
Instead of law, however, Zelenskyy found his calling in theatre, in which he was active as a student.
The president is married to Olena Zelenska and they have two children — daughter Oleksandra and son Kyrylo.
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Zelenskyy, The Comedian And Performer
From 1997 to 2003, Zelenskyy had been an actor, performer, script writer, and producer of the stand-up comedy contest team, Kvartal 95 (‘Quarter 95’), the presidential website said.
In 1997, Kvartal 95 appeared in the televised finals of KVN, a popular improvisational comedy competition that was broadcast throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States, according to Britannica.
Zelenskyy and Kvartal 95 appeared on the programme until 2003, the year he co-founded production company Studio Kvartal 95.
It went on to become one of Ukraine’s most prolific and successful entertainment studios, where Zelenskyy served as the artistic director until 2011, the year he was named general producer of Inter TV, a television channel.
After leaving the channel in 2012, Zelensky and Kvartal 95 signed a joint production agreement with the Ukrainian network 1+1 the same year. He then appeared in several feature films too — Rzhevskiy Versus Napoleon (2012), 8 First Dates (2012) and 8 New Dates (2015) to name a few.
When Zelenskyy Switched To Politics
By 2013, Zelenskyy had returned to Kvartal 95 as its artistic director. It was the time when a lot was happening on Ukraine’s political scene, and Zelenskyy did not remain untouched by the turbulence.
As civilian protests rocked the country, the government of then president Viktor Yanukovych was toppled in February 2014. Billionaire Petro Poroshenko was elected the new president. A Russian-backed insurgency raged in eastern Ukraine, and the public confidence in the government was diminishing in the country due to widespread corruption. Poroshenko was struggling to stay afloat.
In October 2015, Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People premiered on 1+1. He played Vasiliy Goloborodko, a history teacher. Zelenskyy became a viral Internet sensation after someone filmed him delivering a strong address, laden with profanity, against official corruption. In the show, which was a massive hit, Goloborodko chooses to become the president of Ukraine.
The Britannica article says this provided Zelenskyy with something of a roadmap, and Kvartal 95 officially registered Servant of the People as a political party in 2018.
Zelenskyy’s Path To Presidency
The political situation was turning worse, and Poroshenko’s approval rating was down to single digits. The economy was at its lowest ebb as the 2019 presidential election approached.
The election saw more than three dozen people announcing their candidacy. Zelenskyy was one of them, and was among the front-runners from the very beginning. Zelenskyy had announced his decision on 1+1 on December 31, 2018, just before Poroshenko’s annual New Year’s address.
The network 1+1 was owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the wealthiest Ukrainians. Zelenskyy faced controversy as his relationship with Kolomoisky came under scrutiny as questions were raised about the latter’s involvement in Zelenskyy’s campaign.
According to Britannica, Kolomoisky was previously a staunch Poroshenko ally, but had been living in self-imposed exile since June 2017 after the president nationalised PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest lender that he had cofounded. Kolomoisky was accused of stealing billions from the financial institution, and the government had to inject more than $5.6 billion into the company to keep it afloat.
Zelenskyy, however, managed to distance himself from Kolomoisky, with his campaign strategy that was totally different from what people had seen so far. His speeches would be short, or he would post comedy sets to YouTube and Instagram as part of his ‘campaign’.
On April 21, Zelenskyy was elected president of Ukraine, bagging an impressive 73 per cent of the vote.
Zelenskyy, The President Of Ukraine
In a presidential debate ahead of the final verdict, witnessed by tens of thousands at Kiev’s Olympic Stadium, Poroshenko had tried to portray Zelenskyy as a political novice who didn’t have the required fortitude to confront a mighty opponent like Russian President Vladimir Putin as Ukraine tackled the powerful neighbour that had already annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomous republic, and had been backing a hybrid war in the eastern Ukraine for five years.
The public, however, went with Zelenskyy.
The comedian-turned-president didn’t have it easy from the beginning. Even before he had assumed charge (on May 20, 2019), Putin announced his decision to offer Russian passports to the people in the separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine.
In response, Zelenskyy took to Facebook to extend Ukrainian citizenship to Russians and others suffering from “authoritarian or corrupt regimes”.
His presidential victory did not have a legislative mandate because his Servant of the People did not occupy any seat in the Ukrainian parliament. Zelenskyy in his inaugural address after being sworn in as president called for dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada or Supreme Council. In the snap elections held on July 21, which Zelenskyy described as “maybe more important than the presidential election”, Servant of the People captured 254 of the 450 seats. This was the first time in Ukraine after the dissolution of the USSR that a single party had won an absolute majority (no elections were held on 26 of the total 450 seats that represented Crimea and the war zone in the east).
Zelenskyy And US Controversy
Zelenskyy found himself in the centre of a scandal involving world politics in September 2019 when a whistleblower in the US lodged a formal complaint that then president Donald Trump had withheld a big military aid package to Ukraine unless the latter initiated a probe into alleged wrongdoing by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump had claimed that Biden had used his office to benefit his son who had served on the board of Ukrainian energy conglomerate Burisma Holdings.
It was widely reported that Trump had a phone call with Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, when he discussed an investigation of the Biden family. Though Trump admitted that he had ordered the aid package withheld, he claimed that he neither demanded nor was offered any quid pro quo.
The funds were finally released but the Trump-Zelenskyy call had become a big political issue by then. It was that call, and Trump’s alleged bid to pressure the Ukrainian president, served as the basis for the impeachment inquiry against Trump by the US House of Representatives in September 2019.
Zelenskyy And Russia
Zelenskyy, after becoming president, campaigned to ease tensions with Russia. He also attempted to project strength as Putin amassed troops on the border. But his efforts evidently didn’t work.
Local Ukrainians had hoped for nothing short of “miracle” from the new leader, but that didn’t happen in the around three years of Zelenskyy rule.
"Zelenskyy promised to end the war and defeat corruption, but this did not happen. Prices are rising, corruption has not gone away and we have begun to live even poorer," Anatoly Rudenko, who works as a driver in Ukraine, told NPR recently.
Tatyana Shmeleva, an economist, said: "The miracle did not happen. The situation is only getting worse."
In a televised address Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine "will not give anything to anyone".
He has since asked the world community to support Ukraine by imposing more and more sanctions against Russia even as he appealed for an "anti-war coalition".
Analysts worry Zelenskyy is too politically inexperienced to stand up to Russian aggression.
The Ukrainian leader, however, is still holding fort.
He said Thursday his country’s intelligence services believe he is Russia’s “No. 1 target”, and his family the second, but added that he would not back down.
Later, as Russian forces announced they had cut capital Kyiv off from the western part of the country and captured strategic locations to the city’s north, the Ukrainian sent across his message in a recorded video Friday night.
“We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine,” he said, standing in front of the presidency building.
“We will not lay down any weapons. We will defend our state, because our weapons are our truth,” he said in the clip posted on Saturday morning.
In a Twitter post on Saturday morning, Zelenskyy said the "anti-war coalition is working".