Volodymyr Zelenskyy

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Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (1978–) is the 6th serving president of Ukraine (and resident badass) since 2019, after previously working as an actor and comedian. He became president after the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election when he defeated Petro Poroshenko. In February 2022, his main challenge became to defeat Vladimir Putin's Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, survive the war, and lead his people and nation to victory.

Early life

Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine to Jewish parents on 25 January 1978. Before starting elementary school, Zelenskyy temporarily moved to Erdenet, Mongolia for four years. Back in Ukraine, Zelenskyy studied at Kyiv National Economic University in 1995 and graduated with a law degree in 2000. He also found his romantic partner, Olena Zelenska, at the same school where they would later marry and have two children. His native language is Russian, but he also speaks Ukrainian and English.

Acting career

Zelenskyy's acting career focused on comedy and romantic comedy in joining the Ukraine TV series company Kvartal 95 Studio. Zelenskyy featured in a number of movies, two TV shows, and one musical film which are listed below:

Movies

• Love in the Big City (2009)
• Love in the Big City 2 (2010)
• Office Romance. Our Time (2011)
• Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon (2012)
• 8 First Dates (2012)
• Love in Vegas (2014)
• 8 New Dates (2015)
• 8 Best Dates (2016)
• Me. You. He. She (2018)

TV shows

• Servant of the People (2015-2019)
• Svaty (2008-2017)

Musical movies

• Three Musketeers (2004)

Zelenskyy's acting career had not just paid off at making comedy, but also increased the ratings of the Kvartal 95 Studio TV since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Similarly, the Servant of the People series would see a surge in popularity in the wake of the invasion as Netflix acquired the rights to air the show internationally, and countless television stations have also expressed their interest in broadcasting it.

From clown to politician

Zelenskyy entered the political world when he joined the Servant of the People political party in 2017, a party inspired by and named after the satirical TV show Servant of the People in which Zelenskyy plays a high school teacher who gets elected president. In 2018 he became the leader of the party, and he went on to run in the 2019 presidential election.

Zelenskyy vs Poroshenko

On 31 December 2018, Zelenskyy officially declared that he was running for President of Ukraine against then-incumbent Petro Poroshenko. The voting process lasted from 31 March 2019 (first round) to 21 April 2019 (second round). Zelenskyy ran on a populist, anti-corruption, civil-libertarian, pro-European Union platform whose promises and positions included negotiating an end to the War in the Donbas, support for E-democracy and referenda, making it easier for Ukrainian citizens living in occupied territories to collect Ukrainian pensions, legalizing and regulating cannabis and sex work, and ending the policy of giving elected officials immunity from prosecution. He ran an unorthodox campaign in which he often appeared onstage with members of his comedy troupe, and he successfully pitched himself to voters as the corruption-fighting, middle-class man that he played on TV.

Results

Zelenskyy won the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election to everyone's shock. He won both the first round and the second round and ended up getting 73% of the votes, while Poroshenko only got 24%.

President of Ukraine

Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine on 20 May 2019, where he would face challenges to stabilize his country.

2019

Trump-Ukraine scandal

Zelenskyy in 2019 faced his first challenge with the Trump-Ukraine scandal when Donald Trump called Zelenskyy to blackmail him in order to spy on Joe Biden so that Trump could gain advantage in the 2020 United States presidential election by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine. Trump was desperate to win not only against Biden but also to get dirt on Biden's son, Hunter Biden, but this backfired due to Trump's stupidity.

The scandal began by an anonymous CIA whistleblower leaking the telephone conversation between Trump and Zelenskyy back on 25 July 2019, and showing how it was not really a normal conversation but blackmail. The CIA officer made the complaint on 12 August 2019, where the anonymous CIA officer showed it to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson where he made sure it was a genuine leak and sent it to the Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. This further led to public knowledge of the scandal. Trump desperately wanted the whistleblower to be outed, without success, but he had bigger trouble with the impeachment that was right up his ass.

Zelenskyy's reaction to the scandal was to deny it as he said it was a normal conversation with no blackmail, however this is clearly a lie.

2020

Iran shoots down a Ukrainian plane

Iran shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on 8 January 2020; an error with their radar systems made Iran think the plane was an American cruise missile.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's reaction to the shooting of flight 752 was heightened with empathy to the families that lost 11 Ukrainians out of a total 176 passengers. Zelenskyy also was happy that Iran acknowledged responsibility for the attack (which came forth through international pressure). However, Zelenskyy was not fully satisfied, as he wanted Iran to carry out full-scale investigations, prosecuting those responsible, and accepting full guilt. As of 2023, Iran still has yet to accept full guilt for the attack.

COVID-19 in Ukraine

The COVID-19 pandemic eventually hit Ukraine on 3 March 2020. The origin of COVID-19 in Ukraine started when a man travelled on a plane from Italy and arrived in a Romanian town of Suceava on 26 February, 2020. He later moved to Ukraine by car in the western city of Chernivtsi, where from there it has caused more than 5 million infections and over 100,000 deaths according to the World Health Organization.

Zelenskyy's response to the COVID-19 in Ukraine was positive, unlike many world leaders bungling their responses to COVID-19. At first, he banned mass events and closed down schools for three weeks, starting on 12 March. Zelenskyy also restricted people from interacting with each other in public settings such as restaurants, bars, gyms, and shopping centers. While only 6 percent of Ukrainians felt the government was overreacting, which would make the Ukrainian COVID-19 handing situation good; in reality, Ukraine, like many other nations suffered from the healthcare crisis. The crisis caused a shortage of medical equipment and hospital capacity. In order for Ukraine to stop its shortage of medical equipment, the government banned all exports of it.

Burial of a Ukrainian citizen who died of COVID-19.

2021

Attempting to stop Putin's dreams

Putin's territorial madness of Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic would try to create a Soviet Union nostalgia of Putin's delusional dreams of making Russia great again. Zelenskyy was trying to stop Putin from achieving this dream by trying to make Ukraine part of Russia and to stop Putin from pressuring Ukraine to not join NATO. This whole crisis started all the way back in 2013 when Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, which was basically an agreement for Ukraine to have relations with the EU and be more like them. Due to this refusal to sign the agreement, the people of Ukraine went full psycho on him by triggering the Euromaidan protests on 21 November 2013, which later during the late Euromaidan protests on 18 February 2014 triggered the Revolution of Dignity to completely overthrow him and the government.

Putin, however, could not accept this and soon launched the Annexation of Crimea on 20 February 2014, just two days after the Ukrainian revolution. This began the Russo-Ukraine war in 2014 until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Between 3 March 2021 and 24 February 2022, tensions were rising between Ukraine and Russia in a not so good direction. This happened because Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk was cracked down on due to being pro-Russian, causing a burst of renewed tensions between Ukraine and Russia that ultimately led to Russia initiating military violence. The tensions eventually died down, only to be escalated again in November 2021, starting the violence and tension all over again.

Zelenskyy was desperate to stop Putin's stupidity from becoming a reality by begging Joe Biden and NATO to speed up the process to enter NATO. Even before Zelenskyy's begging, he tried to settle peace agreements with Putin, however, it all came to failure at the end of the day since Putin's patience had run out, and he would do something that became the biggest challenge he has ever faced.

Surviving Putin's dreams

Putin launched his full scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and now Zelenskyy had to survive it. Unlike Saddam Hussein, who was a coward who hid himself away during the American invasion of Iraq, Zelenskyy stood his ground during the invasion and the war. Zelenskyy refused to leave office and instead fought against Putin even when the Russian military was outside of his home coming towards him in Kyiv. Zelenskyy until now has survived the ongoing war, but whatever happens to him during the war or after, he will always be remembered as a brave hero who stood his ground and fought for his country and people.

Probably the only bad thing

Of course, no one is perfect, including Zelenskyy. He made what is possibly his only slip up when he inadvertently applauded a Nazi (alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) who fought in the Ukrainian battalion of the SS, and was lauded as a hero. But as far as anyone knows, it seems to have been unintentional on Zelenskyy’s part, given that the man in question was in hiding and not well known until recently.

See also

• Vladimir Putin - his mortal enemy, the man responsible for invading his country.