The Ukrainian President, once one of the most popular TV comedians in the country, couldn’t have imagined less than four years ago that his neighbour, the world’s third strongest country in power ranking, would come knocking down all the doors to the gates of the state capital, Kyiv.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that that he and his family remained in Ukraine, despite Russia identifying him as “target number one”. AFP
The Ukrainian President, once one of the most popular TV comedians in the country, couldn’t have imagined less than four years ago that his neighbour, the world’s third strongest country in power ranking, would come knocking down all the doors to the gates of the state capital, Kyiv.
As the Ukraine army battled Russian forces outside the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to stay in Kyiv and said he had been marked as “the number one target” by the enemy.
Let’s take a look at the former comedian’s glamorous past and how he found himself in the middle of this serious affair:
Who is Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Long before Zelenskyy made his way through to political galleries, the Russian-speaking Ukrainian made a name with his comedy troupe, Kvartal 95.
In 2015, he starred in “Servant of the People”, a sitcom about a school teacher who becomes the president of Ukraine after his rant about corruption goes viral.
The sitcom ran for four years, till 2019.
The 44-year-old won the presidential election in a landslide in 2019, defeating Petro Poroshenko.
As per the LA Times, Zelenskyy positioned himself as a political outsider during his presidential campaign. He presented himself as an eager candidate who was willing to shake up the establishment.
His campaign was supported by two goals: breaking up oligarchs’ economic power and ending the war in Ukraine’s Donbass region.
Zelenskyy as president
It was one of his promises to end Ukraine’s conflict with Russia by engaging in dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, in the last year, Zelenskyy’s administration has only faced an escalation of tension with Russia.
The amateur politician is known to keep his calm in the face of an impending disaster, even too calm to fit the situation.
Last week, when the US warned in an urgent tone of an imminent war with Russia that could begin without warning, Zelenskyy appealed to his 44 million fellow Ukrainians to “show the world our unity”, instead of mobilising troops to face the threat posed by thousands of Russian soldiers on Ukraine’s borders.