Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Who is Ukraine's comedian turned president?

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you may be wondering who exactly the Ukrainian President is.Well, you may not have known that Zelenskyy had a very different career before becoming president in 2019.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Before becoming president in April 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy used to be a comedian/actor. Just before his campaign, he played the Ukrainian President in the series Servant of the People. Maybe he realised that was his calling card to change his career...

In the series finale, Zelenskyy gave a speech as the down-on-his-luck high-school teacher, who is thrust into the Ukrainian presidency after his rant about corruption goes viral.

Today I will start with long-awaited words, which I wish to announce with pride,

Finally," he continued. "Ukraine is United ... This is our victory.

That speech was originally fiction but may turn out to be a reality with the ongoing crisis.

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How did he become president?

Odd as it may seem, the television production company, Kvartal 95, which created the series Servant of the People actually became a political party and kept its name in March 2018. Zelenskyy was interviewed by Der Spiegel where he said that he wanted to get into politics so people would once again trust politicians and wanted ‘to bring professional, decent people to power’.

Zelenskyy began his successful campaign on December 31 2018. It was done almost entirely virtually. His presidential campaign was up against former President Petro Poroshenko.

One of Zelenskyy's presidential campaign promises was that he would serve only one term in office which is five years. Zelenskyy has now been in office for three years.

War in Ukraine

During the ongoing war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not kept quiet. Most recently, the presidentfilmed himself in Kyiv after a rumour had spread that he had told his soldiers to ‘put down their arms’. Zelenskyy quickly debunked this rumour to keep up his country’s morale.

In his video he said:

I am here. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this,

That is it. That's all I wanted to tell you. Glory to Ukraine,

In his televised address on Friday, Zelenskyy praised Ukraine’s armed forces for ‘brilliantly defending the country’. The president is extremely active on social media, using his Twitter account to post regular updates about the conflict and to reassure his citizens.