biography volodymyr zelensky

Who is Volodymyr Zelenskyy? The past, present and future of the Ukrainian president

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy  met with President Joe Biden  in December 2022 in the U.S., marking his first trip outside of Ukraine since Russia began its invasion of the country in February. 

Biden invited Zelenskyy to address Congress to reinforce the U.S. “stands with Ukraine for as long as it takes.” Zelenskyy has entered the international eye largely since the war began and is TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2022 .

Here’s what you need to know about the Ukrainian leader:

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Who is Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

Zelenskyy is the sixth President of Ukraine, elected in April 2019. The 44-year-old unseated incumbent Petro Poroshenko with 73% of the vote. Poroshenko had been in office since 2014. 

Since Russia invaded in February 2022, Zelenskyy has been the face of Ukrainian resistance, notably for his visibility online and his pleas to other countries for support. When Russian state media began spreading misinformation that Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv, Zelenskyy filmed himself in the streets of the capital saying that he would not leave Ukraine. He also declined the U.S. invitation to help him evacuate the city, saying “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

• Zelenskyy was born in southern Ukraine in 1978 and is fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and English. He relocated to Mongolia with his family as a child before returning to Ukraine and entering school. 
• Zelenskyy graduated with a law degree from Kyiv National Economic University, but became active in theater as a student and would later pursue that rather than law. 
• Zelenskyy's grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelenskyy, fought for the Soviet Union during World War II. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, had family members who were killed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

Shortly before his inauguration in 2019, Zelenskyy visited the grave of his grandfather in his hometown of Kryvy Rih on May 9 in what he called his family's "Thanksgiving," also known as Victory Day: the anniversary of the day Nazi Germany surrendered.

"Thanksgiving for the fact that the inhuman ideology of Nazism is a thing of the past, thanksgiving to those who fought against Nazism – and won, thanksgiving everyone for the opportunity to be born and live," he wrote in a Facebook post . "No one has the right to privatize this victory, to say that it could have happened without Ukrainians. We remember those who had lost their lives. And we honor those who are still alive, there are very few of them left."

Before he was President, Zelenskyy was an actor and comedian

Zelenskyy’s career in entertainment includes comedy, acting, screenwriting, producing and directing roles. In 2003, he founded production company Studio Kvartal 95 with school friends. Kvartal 95 produces films, cartoons and comedy shows, including “Servant of the People,” perhaps Zelenskyy’s most well-known role other than the highest seat in Ukraine. 

In “Servant of the People,” which ran from 2015-2019, Zelenskyy plays a Ukrainian high school teacher whose tirade against government corruption goes viral and lands him as president of Ukraine. 

It was this show that served as Zelenskyy’s path forward into the presidency — the show was a hit and Kvartal 95 registered Servant of the People as a political party in Ukraine in 2018 to promote Zelenskyy’s campaign. Servant of the People follows a “Ukrainian centrism” approach when it comes to ideology, rather than nationalism, communism or neoliberalism, Kyiv Post reports.

Zelenskyy and the United States

It was a conversation between former President Donald trump and Zelenskyy that led to the House filing an impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019.

In August 2019, an unnamed official in the intelligence community filed a complaint saying Trump had a phone call with Zelenskyy. In the call, Trump urged the Ukrainian president to investigate Burisma Group, a Ukrainian energy company for which President Joe Biden's son Hunter had served on the board of directors, as his administration was holding up millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine approved by Congress.

After Trump was acquitted, Zelenskyy pushed back on Trump's claims that Ukraine was a corrupt country.

Most of the Biden administration's relations with Ukraine have been concerning the Russian invasion. In 2021, Zelenskyy appealed to Biden to let Ukraine join NATO. Despite a long standing intention to join, Ukraine is still not a NATO member but is a NATO partner country. 

Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. marks the 300th day since Russian invasion. The U.S. has provided about $68 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and lawmakers are about to vote on an additional $45 billion in emergency assistance. 

Biden and Zelenskyy are scheduled to hold a joint press conference Wednesday, and the U.S. president is expected to commit $2 billion in additional U.S. security assistance to Ukraine amid Russian missile and drone bombing. 

What is NATO?: History, facts, members and why it was created

Russian strike: 60 missiles launched into four Ukraine cities

Who is Zelenskyy’s wife?

Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska is a longtime comedy writer. She was born to an engineer and professor and was in junior high school when Ukraine gained independence in 1991. She and Zelenskyy — last names are gendered in Ukrainian — met in high school and started dating in university, she told Vogue. 

Zelenska graduated with a degree in architecture but, like her husband, wanted to pursue satirical comedy. Zelenska helped found Kvartal 95.

Zelenska traveled to the U.S. to appeal to Congress in July, asking for the U.S. to stand with Ukraine and provide more weapons to protect the country. She also thanked the U.S. for the billions of dollars already committed to aiding Ukraine. 

"You help us and your help is very strong," Zelenska said. "While Russia kills, America  saves, and you should know about it. We thank you for that."

In an interview with NBC News, Zelenska noted the toll the Russian invasion has taken on children.

“Before the war, my son used to go to the folk dance ensemble. He played piano. He learned English. He of course attended sports club,” Zelenska said through a translator . “And now, I cannot bring him back to doing arts and humanities. The only thing he wants to do is martial arts and how to use a rifle.” 

The pair share two children, Kyryrlo, 9, and Oleksandra, 18. 

Contributing: Jordan Mendoza

• The war in Ukraine: Plotting the locations of 'one of the biggest rocket attacks' Russia has unleashed on Ukraine
• Christmas in Ukraine: Retired military couple helps remove bombs in war-torn country
• 82,000 Ukrainians living in US: "U4U" program allows Ukrainians to stay in the U.S. for two years.
• Person of Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the spirit of Ukraine named Time's 2022 Person of the Year
• The war in Ukraine: A visual breakdown of Russian military bases set ablaze by drone strikes

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International Edition

2022 Person of the year Volodymyr Zelensky

Read about the people who represent the Spirit of Ukraine in the second part of TIME’s Person of the Year coverage .

The call from the President’s office came on a Saturday evening: Be ready to go the next day, an aide said, and pack a toothbrush. There were no details about the destination or how we would get there, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. Only two days earlier, on the 260th day of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians had retreated from the city of Kherson . It was the only regional capital they had managed to seize since the start of the all-out war in February , and the Kremlin had promised it would forever be a part of Russia. Now Kherson was free, and Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to get there as soon as possible.

His bodyguards were urging him to wait. The Russians had destroyed the city’s infrastructure, leaving it with no water, power, or heat. Its outskirts were littered with mines. Government buildings were rigged with trip wires. On the highway to Kherson, an explosion had destroyed a bridge, rendering it impassable. As they fled, the Russians were also suspected of leaving behind agents and saboteurs who could try to ambush the presidential convoy, to assassinate Zelensky or take him hostage. There would be no way to ensure his safety on the central square, where crowds had gathered to celebrate the city’s liberation, within range of Russian artillery.

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How war changed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Dave Davies

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy sings the national anthem during a visit to the city of Izium, in the Kharkiv, Sept. 14, 2022. Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP hide caption

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy sings the national anthem during a visit to the city of Izium, in the Kharkiv, Sept. 14, 2022.

Nearly two years into Russia's war in Ukraine , Time correspondent Simon Shuster says Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is "almost unrecognizable" from the happy-go-lucky, optimistic comedian Shuster first met in 2019.

"There's just a toughness and a certain darkness about him now that really didn't exist before," Shuster says of the former sitcom star. "He's still extremely committed to this war, to winning this war. ... And he's very single minded, almost obsessive, in pursuing that goal."

Shuster, who has a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother, has been reporting on the region for 17 years and spent months embedded with Zelenskyy's team in Kyiv as the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded in February 2022. His new book is The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Reporter describes an astounding amount of military hardware going in to help Ukraine

Although the U.S. had warned that a Russian invasion was imminent, Shuster writes that Zelenskyy did not believe that the capital would be attacked. In fact, Shuster says, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska was "totally shocked" by the invasion, and hadn't even packed a suitcase.

From the very beginning, Shuster says Zelenskyy drew on his background as an entertainer to help communicate the Ukrainian plight to a broader audience — even as he worried that the world's attention would eventually fade.

Ukraine invasion — explained

"Often his military tactical decisions were guided by a desire to have these demonstrative victories, something that could really grab the world's attention, whether it's bombing the bridge that connects Russia to Crimea, or various battles ... that maybe were not strategically the most important, but they were dramatic," Shuster says.

Shuster says, looking ahead, that Zelenskyy and his team are open to negotiating for peace with Russia, but they are also developing ways to sustain the war — even if Western support declines.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy went from comedian to icon of democracy. This is how he did it

"President Zelenskyy and his team have a clear vision of where this goes next," Shuster says. "They ... are actively developing ways to sustain the fight, not to be pushed into a capitulation or a negotiation that they don't want to participate in, and to continue fighting on their own resources, their own weapons."

Interview highlights

On Zelenskyy's reaction to the destruction and atrocities in Bucha

Zelenskyy takes center stage in Davos as he tries to rally support for Ukraine

On a personal level, it was absolutely devastating to him. I think, to an extent, that surprised me; he really takes the suffering of civilians close to the heart. He doesn't see them as some kind of abstract mass, sacrificing for the nation. He really feels the pain of individual victims of this war. So that day when he went to Bucha and he saw the atrocities committed there, hundreds of civilians massacred, some tortured, it was just the worst kinds of scenes you could imagine at war time, he was deeply affected by that emotionally.

In Bucha, death, devastation and a graveyard of mines

Ravaged by Russian troops, Bucha rises from the ashes

He later described it as the worst day of that tragic year. He said it taught him that the devil is not far away, not some figment of our imagination but he's right here on this earth. He said he saw the work of the devil there in Bucha. The next phase, when he sort of took in that pain, he moved on to the next stage of the war. He still had a war to fight. And he invited the media to visit Bucha ... and he began inviting his international partners and allies, Europeans, Americans from all over the world. Every time they made a visit to President Zelenskyy in Kyiv, he encouraged them to visit Bucha, to see it for themselves. ... They saw the atrocities for themselves, and it would encourage them to maintain a much higher level of support when they went back home to their capitals after having seen up close the mass graves and the real evidence of Russian war crimes.

On surprising concessions Zelenskyy was willing to make in negotiations with Russia

They continued the negotiations even after the atrocities were revealed in Bucha — even after many of Zelenskyy's own advisers told him, 'We can't go on with these negotiations. We can't talk to these monsters after what they've done to us.' Zelenskyy would continue insisting that no, even though this is a genocidal war, we need to continue trying to find peace at the negotiating table. So they did offer a series of concessions, very serious ones. One of them, the main one was this idea of permanent neutrality. So Ukraine would agree to give up its ambition of joining the NATO alliance. This was one of the main excuses that Vladimir Putin used to justify this horrific invasion, that he wanted to stop NATO from admitting Ukraine. Not that NATO had any plans to admit Ukraine anytime soon, but this was kind of one of the paranoid risks that Putin pointed to. So Zelenskyy said, alright, if that's what you're afraid of, we will make a formal commitment to remain neutral. He even agreed that any military exercises that involve foreign troops on the territory of Ukraine would not happen without Russian approval, if Russia saw those exercises as a risk. So he was willing to really go far in granting concessions early in the invasion. And those negotiations gradually broke apart. One of the reasons was Bucha and the atrocities uncovered. But I think also what we saw was that in April, there were a series of victories that Ukraine achieved on the battlefield that convinced Zelenskyy that, hey, maybe we should see how far we can push this militarily while we have the momentum. Maybe we don't need to negotiate right now. Maybe we fight first, push the Russians back, and then potentially negotiate from a position of strength.

On the July 2019 phone call between Zelenzkyy and President Trump, which later became the basis of Trump's first impeachment

If you read closely the White House transcript that was later released of that phone call, at the end Trump promises to arrange a visit for Zelenskyy to the White House. And it's hard to overstate the importance of that kind of visit for any Ukrainian leader. The United States is by far the most important ally, not only because of relying on U.S. weapons, but also for political support, diplomatic support, financial aid loans. Any incoming Ukrainian president, any Ukrainian president, period, needs to constantly demonstrate the strength of his or her relationship with the United States.

READ: House Intel Committee Releases Whistleblower Complaint On Trump-Ukraine Call

So for Zelenskyy coming in, that was priority number one in the international arena to visit the White House, to sit there with the U.S. president, whoever it may be, and to demonstrate to the people back in Ukraine that, look, under my leadership, this relationship will continue to grow stronger, certainly won't grow weaker. So that was what was going through Zelenskyy's mind for the most part at the time. And when, at the end of that phone call, Trump said, "OK, sure. Come on down to Washington and we'll arrange this visit," they saw that as quite an accomplishment. So when they put down the phone as one of the participants, on the Ukrainian side told me, there was some jubilation in the room on the Ukrainian side, and they actually went to a neighboring room and they had some ice cream to celebrate.

On what lesson Zelenskyy drew from Trump's first impeachment

I talked to a number of the people whose messages wound up projected onto the big screens in the hearing rooms during the impeachment inquiry in Congress. Imagine what that feels like. You're a state official in Ukraine. You're having confidential, classified conversations with your counterparts in the United States. You're assuming that those conversations, text messages, emails are going to remain private. And then you turn on CNN and you see your messages projected onto the screen for the world to see. That was very humiliating. It was very demeaning. In many cases, the U.S. authorities did not consult with the Ukrainians before publishing those communications. So that was quite annoying. One close adviser to Zelenskyy called it a cold shower. That was one of the milder phrases used to describe that experience.

In the middle of the impeachment hearings, I sat down with President Zelenskyy in his office, for one of our interviews that is described in the book, and it was maybe one of the lowest points that I'd seen him. He was at the time preparing also simultaneously for his first sit down negotiations with Vladimir Putin. The goals of those negotiations were to end the separatist conflict in the East and prevent the kind of invasion that we later saw play out across Ukraine. So he had a lot to juggle while he was focused on trying to negotiate with Putin and settle their relations and bring peace, all the American media, and all the international media wanted to talk about was Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and all this stuff. So it was a massive distraction. One quote that stands out from that interview was he said, "I don't trust anyone at all." And essentially the lesson to him was: Alliances are flimsy. Everyone just has their national interests, their personal interests. And he felt a deep disillusionment in his belief that he could rely on certain allies, Europeans, Americans. He said everybody just has their interests, and I don't trust anyone at all.

Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

Correction Jan. 24, 2024

A previous version of this story misspelled the capital of Ukraine as Kiev. It it Kyiv.

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Zelenskyy’s unlikely journey, from comedy to wartime leader

FILE - Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a media conference at an Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels, Dec. 15, 2021. (Johanna Geron/ Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrive for a working session at the Elysee Palace, Dec. 9, 2019, in Paris. (Ian Langsdon/Pool via AP, File)

FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy surrounded by servicemen as he visits the war-hit Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Oct. 14, 2021. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the nation via his phone in the center of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. Russian troops stormed toward Ukraine’s capital Saturday, and street fighting broke out as city officials urged residents to take shelter. The country’s president refused an American offer to evacuate, insisting that he would stay. “The fight is here,” he said. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy performs during a show in Brovary, near Kiev, Ukraine on March 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

FILE - Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, is surrounded by journalists after voting at a polling station, during the presidential elections in Kiev, Ukraine, March. 31, 2019. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy takes a selfie at the first congress of his party called Servant of the People in the city Botanical Garden, Kiev, Ukraine, June 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Zoya Shu, File)

FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a talk with journalists in Kyiv, Ukraine on Oct. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, center, and his wife Olena Zelenska celebrate a victory with their supporters at his headquarters after the second round of presidential elections in Kiev, Ukraine, April 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks at a front-line position from a shelter as he visits eastern Ukraine, where the country’s military has been locked in a conflict with Russia-backed separatists. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — When Volodymyr Zelenskyy was growing up in southeastern Ukraine, his Jewish family spoke Russian and his father once forbade the younger Zelenskyy from going abroad to study in Israel. Instead, Zelenskyy studied law at home. Upon graduation, he found a new home in movie acting and comedy — rocketing in the 2010s to become one of Ukraine’s top entertainers with the TV series “Servant of the People.”

In it, he portrayed a lovable high school teacher fed up with corrupt politicians who accidentally becomes president.

Fast forward just a few years, and Zelenskyy is the president of Ukraine for real. At times in the runup to the Russian invasion, the comedian-turned-statesman had seemed inconsistent, berating the West for fearmongering one day, and for not doing enough the next. But his bravery and refusal to leave as rockets have rained down on the capital have also made him an unlikely hero to many around the world.

With courage, good humor and grace under fire that has rallied his people and impressed his Western counterparts, the compact, dark-haired, 44-year-old former actor has stayed even though he says he has a target on his back from the Russian invaders.

After an offer from the United States to transport him to safety, Zelenskyy shot back on Saturday: “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he said in Ukrainian, according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation.

Russian forces on Saturday were encircling Kyiv in the third day of the war. The chief objective, say military observers, is to reach the capital to depose Zelenskyy and his government and install someone more compliant to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The boldness of Zelenskyy’s stand for Ukraine’s sovereignty might not have been expected from a man whose biggest political liability for many years was the feeling that he was too apt to seek compromise with Moscow. He ran for office in part on a platform that he could negotiate peace with Russia, which had seized Crimea from Ukraine and propped up two pro-Russian separatist regions in 2014, leading to a frozen conflict that had killed an estimated 15,000.

Although Zelenskyy managed a prisoner exchange, the efforts for reconciliation faltered as Putin’s insistence that Ukraine back away from the West became ever more intense, painting the Kyiv government as a nest of extremism run by Washington.

Zelenskyy has used his own history to demonstrate that his is a country of possibility, not the hate-filled polity of Putin’s imagination.

In spite of Ukraine’s dark history of antisemitism, reaching back centuries to Cossack pogroms and the collaboration of some anti-Soviet nationalists with Nazi genocide during World War II, Ukraine after Zelenskyy’s election in 2019 became the only country outside of Israel with both a president and prime minister who were Jewish. (Zelenskyy’s grandfather fought in the Soviet Army against the Nazis, while other family died in the Holocaust.)

Like his TV character, Zelenskyy came to office in a landslide democratic election, defeating a billionaire businessman. He promised to break the power of corrupt oligarchs who haphazardly controlled Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

That this fresh-faced upstart, campaigning primarily on social media, could come out of nowhere to claim the country’s top office likely was disturbing to Putin, who has slowly tamed and corralled his own political opposition in Russia.

Putin’s leading political rival, Alexei Navalny, also a comedic, anti-corruption crusader, was poisoned by Russian secret services in 2020 with a nerve agent applied to his underwear. He was fighting for his life when he was allowed under international diplomatic pressure to leave for Germany for medical treatment, and when doctors there saved him, he chose to go back to Russia despite certain risk.

Navalny, now in a Russian prison, has denounced Putin’s military operation in Ukraine.

Both Zelenskyy and Navalny seem to share a perspective that they must face the consequences of their beliefs, no matter what.

“It’s a frightening experience when you come to visit the president of a neighboring country, your colleague, to support him in a difficult situation, (and) you hear from him that you may never meet him again because he is staying there and will defend his country to the last,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said Friday.

He spent time with Zelenskyy on Wednesday just before the fighting started, one of many political leaders who have met with the Ukrainian president over the past month, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

Zelenskyy first came to the attention of many Americans during the administration of President Donald Trump, who in a phone call with Zelenskyy in 2019 leaned on him to dig up dirt on then presidential candidate Biden and his son Hunter that could aid Trump’s re-election campaign. That “perfect” phone call, as Trump later called it, resulted in Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of using his office, and the threat of withholding $400 million in authorized military support for Ukraine, for personal political gain.

Zelenskyy refused to criticize Trump’s call, saying he did not want to get involved in another country’s politics.

Putin’s attack, which the Russian president has termed a “special military operation,” began early Thursday. Putin denied for months that he had any intent to invade, and accused Biden of stirring up war hysteria when Biden revealed the numbers of Russian troops and weapons that had been deployed along Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus — surrounding Ukraine on three sides.

Putin justified the attack by saying it was to defend two breakaway districts in eastern Ukraine from “genocide.”

With Russian media presenting such a picture of his country, Zelenskyy recorded a message to Russians to refute the notion that Ukraine is the aggressor and that he is any kind of warmonger: “They told you I ordered an offensive on the Donbas, to shoot, to bomb, that there’s no question about it. But there are questions, and very simple ones. To shoot whom, to bomb what? Donetsk?”

Recounting his many visits and friends in the region — “I’ve seen the faces, the eyes” — he said, “It’s our land, it’s our history. What are we going to fight over, and with whom?”

Unshaven and in olive green khaki shirts, he has taped other messages to his compatriots on the internet in the last few days to bolster morale and to emphasize that he is going nowhere, but will stay to defend Ukraine. “We are here. Honor to Ukraine,” he declares.

In the runup to the Russian invasion, Zelenskyy was critical of President Joe Biden’s open and detailed warnings about Putin’s intentions, saying they were premature and could cause panic. Then after the war began, he has criticized Washington for not doing more to protect Ukraine, including defending it militarily or accelerating its bid to join NATO.

Zelenskyy and his wife, Olena, an architect, have a 17-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. He said this week that they remained in Ukraine, not joining the exodus of mainly women and children refugees seeking safety abroad.

“The war has transformed the former comedian from a provincial politician with delusions of grandeur into a bona fide statesman,” wrote Melinda Haring of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center for Foreign Affairs on Friday.

Though he can be faulted for not carrying out political reforms quickly enough and for dragging his feet on hardening Ukraine’s long border with Russia over the last year, Haring said, Zelenskyy “has shown a stiff upper lip. He has demonstrated enormous physical courage, refusing to sit in a bunker but instead traveling openly with soldiers, and an unwavering patriotism that few expected from a Russian speaker from eastern Ukraine.”

“To his great credit, he has been unmovable.”

Associated Press writer Monika Scislowska contributed to this report from Warsaw.

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Volodymyr Zelensky behind the mask

Serhii Rudenko’s biography is a portrait of a wartime hero whose troubled past may return to haunt him.

By Lyse Doucet

“Good evening friends,” began Volodymyr Zelensky . It was five minutes to midnight. Ukraine’s wartime president, hailed the world over for his masterclass in leadership, now speaks every night to the people of Ukraine, and many beyond. But this address on New Year’s Eve 2018, on the independent TV channel 1+1, came as a surprise to everyone, including the then-president, Petro Poroshenko.

“Dear Ukrainians, I’m promising you I will run for president. And I’m doing it right away.”

Ukrainian social media exploded. Poroshenko supporters who’d been settling in, Champagne glasses at the ready, for the traditional interruption of regular programming for a presidential New Year’s greeting, were incensed. “Who? This clown?” they asked. “Who is he to run for president?”

That was the night Ukraine’s star comedian and actor – famed for his cheeky, at times crude, comedic routines – entered the political stage. Was it just a publicity stunt, people wondered – another Zelensky antic to promote his popular TV serie s Servant of the People produced by his media company Kvartal 95 Studio, in which his character, the history teacher Vasiliy Holoborodko, is catapulted into the presidency?

It was no joke. Poroshenko was soon crushed by a whopping 73 per cent of the vote by a fresh-faced, clean-shaven 41-year-old – the same guy who’d spent years making jokes about him. Now Zelensky was promising to end cronyism and stop a shooting war in eastern Ukraine where Russian boots first crossed the border in 2014.

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[See also: The Zelensky myth: why we should resist hero-worshipping Ukraine’s president ]

Now the world knows this Zelensky, his face bearded and lined, the supreme commander-in-chief uniting his compatriots, inspiring people the world over as he stands up to the shadowy figure of Vladimir Putin , bent on bombing and besieging Ukraine into submission. In those first breathtaking weeks after Russian tanks rumbled across the borders, the internet sparkled with every Zelensky gem. “Did you know he was the Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear?” “He won Ukraine’s Dancing with the Stars in 2006!”

But today this conflict drags on with no end in sight; it’s everyone’s war now. The cost of the food on our tables and the power keeping the lights on in our homes connects to this barbaric conflagration in Europe’s far corner.

Zelensky now disrupts the world’s media landscape, addressing parliaments from Germany to Japan via video, popping up everywhere from the Grammys to Glastonbury . A consummate communicator, he hits all the right notes: in Britain, he channels his inner Churchill; in Germany, he invokes Ronald Reagan’s “tear down this wall” Berlin speech; in America, Pearl Harbour and 9/ll. One of the few rebukes came from Israel when Ukraine’s Jewish leader tried to draw history lessons from the Holocaust. A team of former top journalists and old TV buddies helps shape this stream. But the first and last word is said to come from Zelensky – a president who films his own video selfies, urging his nation to hold its nerve and berating Western allies to send ever more weapons in a war he’s fighting to secure their future too.

It was only a matter of time before a publisher rushed something into print about this man of the moment. The first, by the Ukrainian writer and commentator Serhii Rudenko, known for his political biographies , was initially published in Ukrainian in 2021, with a title that translates as “Zelensky without Make-Up”. Comprising 38 small chapters, some just a few pages long, the text has been updated with a preface, “Zelensky’s Political Oscar”, and an epilogue, “The President of War” – bookends of an extraordinary life story, which is still being written. Reading this biography now, in the wake of a war that upended our understanding of both Zelensky and Ukraine, presents his personal history in a new light.

It’s not a tidy chronology: Rudenko takes us back and forth in time, offering us Zelensky’s story as if it were a chocolate box, a morsel at a time. But this is no fairy tale. Some chapters tell of endearing childhood dreams. Of course, there’s a section on his entanglement with Donald Trump, who famously telephoned the unsuspecting Zelensky in 2019 looking for a little help to bring down his rival Joe Biden by asking for Biden’s son Hunter to be investigated. And there are the anecdotes of corruption, betrayals and break-ups – the unfinished business of Ukraine’s day-to-day politics that was pushed to the bottom of the pile once the task of fighting an existential war took over.

Every once in a while, the old stories creep in. This month, the European Commission’s beaming president, Ursula von der Leyen, dressed in the brilliant yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, announced Ukraine’s candidacy to join this European club. But behind the effusive statements, there are the whispered warnings. Although Zelensky pushed for the fast track for EU membership, Ukraine will be on a very slow road to rein in its oligarchs, crack down on corruption and build far more effective institutions of state. Cynics say it will never get to the end of that road.

“Ukraine’s packaging is great,” an international adviser in Kyiv recently told me. “But there’s not much beneath the president and all his advisers.”

Zelensky was born to Jewish parents in 1978, in Kryvyi Rih in southern central Ukraine, a “city of miners and metallurgists” and at the time one of the most polluted places in the USSR. Zelensky’s father wanted him to excel in sciences: a “B” grade in maths for Zelensky was “a day of mourning” in their home. But, in Rudenko’s telling, all his school teachers “without exception mention Zelensky as a diligent and intelligent child whose ambition was to be on the stage”. He studied law but dazzled in the KVK championships, a popular contest of comedy and song on Russian television.

But this book about the making of a charismatic communicator is also about his unmaking – at least until a war got in the way. Like the schoolteacher-turned-president he once played on the screen, Zelensky came to power promising “no to nepotism and friends in power”. But kumy – cronies or close buddies – soon turned up everywhere. They included staff from Zelensky’s production company. As Rudenko describes it, “a year after [Zelensky’s] election, the Poroshenko family was replaced by the Zelensky family – or, more precisely, by Kvartal 95 Studio”.

And it wasn’t just talented TV types. That 1+1 TV channel which broadcast Zelensky’s first election campaign speech on New Year’s eve was controlled by Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarchs. He had funded a private army to fight in the region bordering the Donbas in eastern Ukraine when Russian-backed separatists grabbed territory in 2014. Rudenko asks, but doesn’t answer, whether Kolomoisky (who happened to be Poroshenko’s nemesis) and Zelensky launched the TV series Servant of the People as a rehearsal for the real political party that eventually emerged and took the same name.

But Kolomoisky’s relationship with “his” president soon started unravelling, fuelled by his unsuccessful attempts to regain control, and compensation, for his nationalised PrivatBank. And now he is being investigated in the US for money laundering.

[See also: Putin and Zelensky offer contrasting visions of the future ]

In the book’s last pages we read how, the day before Russia’s invasion, Zelensky gathered 50 of Ukraine’s most prosperous citizens to urge them to play their part in the coming conflict. They’d been fighting another battle since last September, when Ukraine’s parliament passed a law directed at them. Zelensky had described the register, meant to be put in place this spring, as a way of resolving, once and for all, the relationship between the state and the oligarchs. “Or… more accurately,” as Rudenko puts it, “Zelensky’s own relationship with them.” Rudenko details how Zelensky’s team repeatedly tried to send Poroshenko to jail but concludes that “there are considerable doubts about whether Zelensky actually wants to put Poroshenko behind bars”.

The comedian who did everything possible to make Ukrainians smile had promised, “I will do everything possible so Ukrainians at least do not cry.” But now he is the nation’s consoler-in-chief as entire cities are wiped off the map, countless lives shredded, soldiers slaughtered. He keeps repeating his election pledge to do everything he can to end this conflict – including attempting talks with the man in Moscow.

Rudenko reveals that, in 2019, “Zelensky sincerely believed that, if he looked into the eyes of the Russian president he would at least see some sign of sadness about the 14,000 dead in the Donbas.” Even more, he “seemed convinced that his actor’s charisma and unique charm would work wonders”. No more.

Zelensky’s first, and so far only, opportunity to look into Putin’s eyes came in the December 2019 Normandy Format talks in Paris, which grouped together Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. But when the fateful moment came, Ukraine’s novice “was noticeably nervous”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is given a rough ride by Ukrainians for daring to hint at the need for territorial compromise, had struck up a relationship with Zelensky long before others did. In April 2019, between the first and second rounds of Ukraine’s presidential election, he invited both Poroshenko and Zelensky to the Elysée Palace. Again, Zelensky was “visibly nervous”. But Rudenko also notes that “Zelensky and Macron understood each other almost instantaneously”.

Fast-forward to June 2022 when Zelensky, in trademark T-shirt, confidently stands outside his office in the Kyiv sunshine to welcome the finely suited Macron, along with German, Italian and Lithuanian leaders. He extends his visibly muscled arms for firm handshakes and fraternal hugs. His visitors’ admiration is palpable. So many, including Putin, had misjudged Zelensky. They expected – even urged – him to flee on the first flight out of Kyiv in those early jaw-dropping days as Russian forces closed in. Ukraine’s military prowess was underestimated; Russia’s overestimated. War is the stuff of metal – and mettle.

It’s much the same on the home front. Critics, among them Zelensky’s close friends and senior officials who had turned against him within months of his electoral triumph, made snide remarks off camera about the president’s inexperience and understanding when I interviewed them in the run-up to Russia’s invasion. Now even the ex-president Poroshenko, who, like Zelensky, has taken to wearing military garb, has rallied behind his former opponent. He recently told me, “Our unity is our most effective weapon against Putin because he’s trying to undermine us from within.” “We’re all soldiers now,” he insisted as he stood in his sandbagged position.

And Rudenko, who watched Zelensky’s early political acrobatics close-up, also can’t resist the swell of patriotic feeling. In his updated biography, he hails a leader who came to power when “few if any believed in the fighting abilities of the president… who didn’t have a clue what the Ukrainian army was”.

He doesn’t take us inside Zelensky’s head; he just gives us the stories behind his presidency. “These tribulations showed us the real Zelensky,” is his conclusion after the invasion.

But now this performer turned president turned wartime leader speaks, visibly pained, of a new stage in a grinding war which is “spiritually difficult, emotionally difficult… We don’t have a sense of how long it will last, how many more blows, losses and efforts will be needed before we see victory is on the horizon.” This phase of the conflict may be Zelensky’s toughest test yet. He’s already shown himself to be less sure-footed as he veers from vague talk of compromises to save lives to vowing to take back every inch of Ukrainian land. As a leader who can read the room, he knows Ukrainian views are hardening in this miasma of Russian war crimes. But he also senses – and warns against – the “war fatigue” in some capitals; one day it will overwhelm his own. It’s the hardest of high-wire acts, even for Zelensky.

Zelensky: A Biography Serhii Rudenko Polity Press, 200pp, £20

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[See also: What Antony Beevor gets wrong about Russia ]

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This article appears in the 29 Jun 2022 issue of the New Statesman, American Darkness

Ukraine says it foiled a Russian spy agency plot to assassinate President Zelenskyy

Ukrainian counterintelligence investigators have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top military and political figures, Ukraine’s state security service said Tuesday.

Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which protects top officials, were detained on suspicion of enacting the plan drawn up by Russia’s Federal Security Service, a statement said. The colonels were recruited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement.

It quoted the head of the State Security Service, Vasyl Maliuk, as saying the plot foresaw an attack ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fifth term Tuesday . Maliuk said he personally oversaw the top-secret operation to track the plot.

Ukrainian claims of Russian efforts to kill Zelenskyy are not new. Zelensky said in 2022 there has been at least 10 attempts to assassinate him as the war with Russia stretches into a third year.

Also, prosecutors in Poland said last month a Polish man had been arrested on allegations of being ready to spy on behalf of Russia’s military intelligence in an alleged plot to assassinate Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian statement said the Russian intelligence agents targeting Zelenskyy sought out members of the Ukrainian military close to the president’s security detail who could take the head of state hostage and later kill him. The operation was run from Moscow, it said, providing the names of three alleged Russian spies behind the conspiracy.

The broader plan was to identify the location of senior Ukrainian officials and target them with a rocket attack, followed by drones and missiles.

The two Ukrainian colonels were arrested on suspicion of treason, which carries a life sentence, the statement said.

The Associated Press

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Ukraine says Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thwarted

May 7, 2024 / 10:03 AM EDT / AP

Kyiv, Ukraine  — Ukrainian counterintelligence investigators have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top military and political figures, Ukraine's state security service said Tuesday. Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which protects top officials, were detained on suspicion of enacting the plan drawn up by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, a statement said.

The colonels were recruited before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement.

It quoted the head of the State Security Service, Vasyl Maliuk, as saying the plot foresaw an attack before Russian President Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a fifth term on Tuesday. Maliuk said that he personally oversaw the top-secret operation to track the plot.

• Russia plans tactical nuclear weapons drill near Ukraine border

Ukrainian claims of Russian efforts to kill Zelenskyy aren't new. Zelensky said in 2022 there has been at least 10 attempts to assassinate him, and now the war with Russia has stretched into its third year.

Also, prosecutors in Poland said last month that a Polish man had been arrested on allegations of being ready to spy on behalf of Russia's military intelligence in an alleged plot to assassinate Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy's movements are kept secret for security reasons, and his visits around the country are publicly announced only after he has left. News of events he holds in Kyiv is usually embargoed until they are over.

Zelenskyy has proved to be a valuable asset for his country as the war against Ukraine's bigger neighbor grinds on, and as Kyiv's depleted forces wait for more troops and weapons. He has urged his people to keep fighting and instilled a belief that Ukraine can prevail.

The Ukrainian statement said the Russian intelligence agents targeting Zelenskyy sought out members of the Ukrainian military close to the president's security detail who could take the head of state hostage and later kill him. The operation was run from Moscow, it said, providing the names of three alleged Russian spies behind the conspiracy.

The broader plan was to identify the location of senior Ukrainian officials and target them with a rocket attack, followed by drones and missiles.

The two Ukrainian colonels were arrested on suspicion of treason, which carries a life sentence, the statement said.

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Ukraine Says It Foiled Russian Plot to Kill Zelensky

The Ukrainian security services arrested two Ukrainian colonels and accused them of spying for Russia. They said the plot also targeted top Ukrainian intelligence officials.

• Share full article

By Constant Méheut and Maria Varenikova

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Ukraine’s security services said on Tuesday that they had foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top military and political figures. Two Ukrainian colonels accused of participating in the plot have been arrested on suspicion of treason.

The Ukrainian domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., said in a statement that the plot had involved a network of agents — including the two colonels — that was run by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main successor to the K.G.B. According to the S.B.U., the agents working at Russia’s direction were tasked with identifying people close to Mr. Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and later kill him.

The agency’s statement said the other top Ukrainian officials targeted in the plot included Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the S.B.U., and Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified.

It is not the first time that Ukraine has reported a potential assassination attempt aimed at its top leaders. Mr. Zelensky said in an interview with an Italian television channel earlier this year that his security services had told him of more than 10 such efforts.

Ukraine’s security services offered few details about previous assassination plots. But this time, the agency went to some length in its statement to describe how the Ukrainian officials were to be killed.

The services said the two colonels accused in the plot belonged to the State Security Administration, which protects top officials. They had been recruited before the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement, which identified three F.S.B. members — Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Oleksiy Kornev — as running the operation from Moscow. The two Ukrainian colonels were not named.

In a video released by the security services , a man identified as one of the colonels, his face blurred, describes details of the apparent plot that involved blocking Mr. Zelensky as he entered or left a building. The authenticity of the video could not be independently confirmed.

As for the assassination attempt aimed at General Budanov, the services said it was planned to take place before Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated on May 5. The F.S.B.’s network of agents in Ukraine was tasked with observing and passing on information about General Budanov’s whereabouts, the Ukrainian security services said.

Once his location had been confirmed and communicated, he would have been targeted in a multilayered attack involving a rocket strike, followed by a drone attack to kill people who were fleeing and then a second rocket strike, the security services said.

Weapons for the attack were provided to one of the colonels, including attack drones, ammunition for a rocket launcher and anti-personnel mines, according to the security services and Ukraine’s prosecutor general. The colonel was to pass the weapons to other agents to carry out the assault, the Ukrainian statement said.

Russia made no immediate comment about the Tuesday accusations.

The apparent assassination plot is just the latest in a series of attempted or successful attacks on Ukrainian figures.

General Budanov’s wife was poisoned late last year , according to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, in an incident that led to widespread speculation that Russia was stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s senior leadership. General Budanov said in February that it was difficult to say if the poisoning was an attempt to murder him, but he hinted that Russia was behind it.

Mr. Zelensky has also been the target of numerous assassination attempts, according to Ukraine’s security services. As recently as last month, the S.B.U. reported that it had arrested, in cooperation with Polish security services, a Polish man who it said had offered to spy for Russia as part of a plot to assassinate Mr. Zelensky.

Ukraine is also believed to have been involved in the killing of several pro-Kremlin voices in Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that parts of the Ukrainian government authorized a car bombing that in 2022 killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. And in December, a former Ukrainian lawmaker living near Moscow was assassinated by Ukrainian security service agents, according to a report by The Financial Times that cited two Ukrainian officials with direct knowledge of the incident.

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people. More about Constant Méheut

Maria Varenikova covers Ukraine and its war with Russia. More about Maria Varenikova

Russian plot to kidnap and kill Volodymyr Zelenskyy thwarted, Ukraine's security service says

The suspected plot is particularly notable because of the alleged involvement of two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which is tasked with protecting top officials.

By Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor, and Niamh Lynch, news reporter

Tuesday 7 May 2024 18:41, UK

Ukraine's security service (SBU) said it has foiled a Russian plot to kidnap and assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and kill other top Ukrainian officials.

Two serving colonels from the Ukrainian government's own protection unit have been arrested in a troubling sign of Russian penetration of Ukraine's security apparatus.

The SBU said the men were part of what it called a "network of agents" that had been working for the Russian security services.

Other intended targets in the conspiracy included Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the SBU, and Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of Ukraine's military intelligence agency.

The plotters had intended to kill the military spy chief before the Orthodox Easter, which this year fell on 5 May, according to a statement by the SBU.

Mr Malyuk said the plot was supposed to be a "gift to Putin before the inauguration" but was "actually a failure of the Russian secret service".

"But we must not forget that the enemy is strong and experienced, and cannot be underestimated. We will continue to work proactively to ensure that every traitor receives a well-deserved court sentence," he said.

Russia has previously been accused of multiple plots to kill Mr Zelenskyy since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

But the latest scheme is particularly notable because of the alleged involvement of two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which is tasked with protecting top officials.

Read more on Sky News: Ukrainian mother captured by Russia describes ordeal Why won't Germany provide Ukraine with better weapons?

Russia's intelligence services recruited the men before the full-scale war, the Ukrainian security service said.

It claimed that the Russian agents had been trying to find members of the Ukrainian military close to President Zelenskyy's security detail who would be willing to take him hostage and kill him.

A broader plan involved identifying the location of a senior Ukrainian official and targeting the site with a missile strike, followed by a drone attack and then a second missile strike.

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The SBU said the whole operation was run from Moscow and it published the names of three Russian intelligence officers who were allegedly behind the plot.

The two Ukrainian colonels were arrested on suspicion of treason, which carries a life sentence.

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The head of the SBU said he "personally controlled" the investigation, which "gradually" built up evidence against the two colonels.

The SBU said the suspects were part of a network working for the FSB, Russia's security service, and had also leaked classified information.

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• Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fires head of his security detail after foiled assassination plot

May 10 (UPI) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the head of his security detail on Friday after two of his colonels earlier in the week were arrested in an alleged assassination plot for Russia.

Serhiy Rud, who had served as chief of the State Guard Service or, UDO, was not implicated in the assassination plot against Zelensky and two other top Ukrainian officials, but was close personal friends with one of the colonels arrested, Andriy Huk.

Ukrainian officials gave no official reason for Rud's removal. Huk and another colonel are accused of being a part of a network of agents in Ukraine working for Russia's FSB security services plotting to kill Zelensky and other top-ranking officials.

Ukraine's state security service, called the SBU, said the latest assassination attempt sought to kill Zelensky, Vasyl Maliuk, who is the head of the SBU, and Kyrylo Budanov, who leads the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.

The SBU said the plot included a scheme where Zelensky would be kidnapped and killed while Maliuk and Budanov would have been killed by either drones, rockets or anti-tank grenades.

Since the Russian invasion of 2022, Zelensky has faced several alleged assassination attempts and had a number of close calls during Russian military operations.

On March 6, a Russian missile struck close to Zelensky's entourage while he was meeting with Greek officials in the port city of Odesa.

Last month , the Russian Interior Ministry placed Zelensky on its criminal "wanted" list for crimes it did not publicize.