Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born January 25, 1978 in Ukraine to cybernetics professor Oleksandr Zelenskyy and his wife Rymma Zelenska, an engineer. His grandfather Semyon Zelenskyy was a colonel in the Red Army. His great-grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. Volodymyr grew up speaking Russian, passed an English proficiency class, earned a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, and joined a comedy team. In 1997, he created and headed the Kvartal 95 comedy team, leading in 2003 to the production of comedy shows on Ukrainian television. He starred in 2008 in a Russian-language feature film, Love in the Big City, and two sequels followed. He also starred in Office Romance, Our Time, Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon, and 8 First Dates. In 2015, Zelenskyy starred in a television series, Servant of the People, in which he played the role of the president of Ukraine. He also appeared in a Ukrainian-language comedy, I, You, He, She.
In October 2018, three months before he announced for office, he was a frontrunner for the presidency of Ukraine, finally announcing his candidacy on December 31, 2018. He styled himself as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption figure in comedy skits released over social media. He received a plurality of the electorate on March 31, 2019 in the first round of voting, and on April 21 was elected with 73 percent of the vote compared to 25 percent for the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko. He took office May 20, 2019 as the nation’s first Jewish president.
He initially focused on reforming the government and reducing the influence of oligarchs. However, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine came to the fore. Separatists in the Donbas region were supplied with weapons and ammunition by the Russians. A first effort to reach a peace agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin failed in 2019, but the two countries were able to negotiate a ceasefire in 2020. In response to a Russian build-up at the Ukrainian borders, Zelenskyy urged NATO members to speed up Ukraine’s application for membership. On Feb. 24, 2022, Putin announced that Russia was initiating a “special military operation” in the Donbas. Russian missiles struck military targets in the Ukraine and Zelenskyy declared martial law and severed diplomatic relations with Russia. When the Ukrainian captal of Kyiv came under attack, Zelenskyy elected to remain there. Russia demanded as a price for peace that Ukraine remain neutral, recognize Russian annexation of the Crimea, and recognition of the separatists republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Zelenskyy responded he was ready for dialogue, not for capitulation.
Zelenskyy made many appeals to nations to curtail their trade with Russia to pressure Putin into ending the war. In December 2022 the US announced it would supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles. Zelenskyy also appealed at the UN General Assembly in 2023 for the countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia to abandon their neutrality and support Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has been married since 2003 to Olena Kiyashko, a college sweetheart. The have a daughter Oleksandra and a son Kyrylo.
Tomorrow, January 26: Paul Newman
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article