On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a decision to conduct special military activities in the Donbass region and send troops to Ukraine, and the Russian-Ukrainian War officially began. After the war began, the situation was firmly controlled by Russia, and the Ukrainian military was gradually defeated. By the afternoon of the 25th, Ukraine's land, sea and air forces had been completely suppressed, and the Russian army had advanced to the vicinity of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and the situation in Ukraine was chaotic. In the international community, NATO and the United States have refused to directly send troops to provide assistance, and Ukraine is completely isolated.
There is little opportunity and time left for Ukraine to salvage the situation, and it is not known how Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky feels at this time, and whether he will regret participating in that year's election, after all, this is really not a problem that a comedian can handle.
Before the dust settles on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, it is better to take a look at ukraine's incumbent president with a strange resume: Vladimir Zelensky.
Zelenskiy, whose full name is Vlamikyr Aleksandrovich Zelensky, was born on January 25, 1978 to a Jewish family in Krivorog, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Zelenskiy's family was well-off, his father was a professor at the Krivorog School of Economics and his mother was an engineer.
After graduating from high school, Zelenskiy originally planned to go to Israel to study at a university, and under the persuasion of his parents, he entered the law school of Kiev University of Economics and chose law as an undergraduate major, but Zelenskiy was not interested in law, except for the two-month internship period, he was not involved in the legal profession.
Unlike his resistance to the law, Zelenskiy was born with a talent for acting and comedy, and in 1997 he partnered with the well-known Ukrainian entertainment program KVN to create the "Kvartal 95" group and as captain, officially entering the actor industry.
Zelenskiy is highly skilled on stage and can always use his superb performance to win the hearts of the audience. Thanks to Zelenskiy's addition, the "Kvartal 95" grew in popularity and began touring between CIS countries. In 2005, Zelenskiy joined the Ukrainian International Channel as an actor and creator, and zelenskiy was already one of the brightest rising stars in ukrainian performing arts.
The TV series "Servant of the People", released in 2015, further enhanced Zelenskiy's reputation in Ukraine, making him one of the most influential actors in the country, known as a "national comedian".
Until 2015, Zelenskiy's life was smooth sailing, career, money, prestige were all within easy reach of Zelenskiy at that time. If he had continued to cultivate his acting career at that time, perhaps he would have achieved greater achievements and even become a generation of acting masters. But just as the so-called success and failure are also Xiao He, the drama "Servant of the People" brings Zelensky's fame and at the same time invisibly pushes Zelenskiy into a field that is not suitable for him - politics.
In Servant of the People, Zelenskiy plays Vasha, an unremarkable history teacher.
In the play, Vasha jumped from an ordinary teacher to the president of Ukraine by chance, and led Ukraine to revival and prosperity. The drama has an excellent plot, a bold theme, the standard of actors is in place, and the ridicule of the Ukrainian political circles in the play is not shy, which makes people laugh loudly without thinking, so the drama immediately caused a huge response as soon as it was released in Ukraine that year.
Zelenskiy also followed in 2017 with the release of the second season of Servant of the People, which was even more successful, while the real change occurred before the release of the third season of Servant of the People. In January 2019, before the Ukrainian presidential election, Zelenskiy announced that he would run for president, and the Ukrainian people were no less surprised to hear this news than the American people when they heard that Dwayne Johnson was going to run for president with Biden. However, most of the Ukrainian people at that time thought that this was just Zelenskiy's speculation for the third season of "Servant of the People", after all, Zelenskiy did not have any party and capital support behind it, and it was not so much a farce to participate in the election.
But it wasn't until the third season of "Servant of the People" aired, zelenskiy still did not give up the presidential campaign, at this time the Ukrainian people reacted, the comedian they loved really wanted to participate in this election, the Vashya teacher who led Ukraine to revival in the play was going to come to reality and lead Ukraine to prosperity.
Thanks to Zelenskiy's image in the play, Zelenskiy's self-sustainment rate reached 25.1% before the election began, ranking first among a number of presidential candidates, and only the current President Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Tymoshenko had to compete for the presidency.
In the first round of the general election, Zelenskiy continued to lead with 30.24% approval, and second-place Poroshenko had only 17.8% approval. Poroshenko, who has huge administrative resources and has been engaged in politics for many years, is really surprising to us to lag behind Zelenskiy with such a huge gap, how can a newcomer with no political background and political experience achieve such results?
The reason is fundamentally the decay and incompetence of the Ukrainian political circles themselves, the people have lost confidence in the existing presidential candidates, and they have pinned their hopes on Zelensky, a newcomer, hoping that he can inject fresh blood and bring about change in Ukrainian politics like Vasha.
In the election process, Zelenskiy has not always been a lone struggle as the public sees, he has always had the help of Kolomoisky, one of the Ukrainian oligarchs, from media publicity to financial assistance, thanks to Kolomoisky's help, and even the establishment and candidacy of people are Kolomoisky's promotion. After Tymoshenko lost to Poroshenko in the first round of elections, in order to avenge his own revenge and expand his own strength, Tymoshenko also joined zelenskiy's aid.
Zelenskiy gained votes and support from the people with the help of his upright and clean political image in front of the public, and on the other hand, he enjoyed the secret support from traditional Ukrainian political forces, including even foreign power from the United States and the European Union. On many fronts, Zelenskiy was officially elected president of Ukraine by defeating Poroshenko with 73.3% of the support in the second round of the presidential election on April 21, 2019.
Zelenskiy, who has just taken office, has high hopes that he will change Ukraine. But can he really do it? According to the situation at that time, it was difficult to ascend to the heavens.
First of all, judging from the domestic form and national accumulation situation at that time, Ukraine can be said to have complete internal and external troubles. Internationally, how should Ukraine's relations with the EU and the United States be handled, and should russia's attitude be changed? Domestically, the pro-Russian forces in their own countries are trying to divide the country, the economy and politics are controlled by a small number of oligarchs, the country's development is constantly regressing, and the needs of the people are not met. These problems are all in front of Zelenskiy, but Zelenskiy himself was propped up by the traditional political forces in the country, and he has very little power and is not outstanding in his own ability. In this case, to let Zelenskiy lead the development of Ukraine is tantamount to a fool's dream.
So what is the actual situation? At the beginning of his term of office, Zelenskiy proposed to increase Ukraine's GDP by 40% in five years, but in fact, Ukraine's GDP grew by only 3% in 2019, and even fell by 4% in 2020, the external debt also increased by 124.6 billion US dollars, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.4%, which is a lack of achievement in domestic economic and development issues.
On political issues, Zelenskiy, who is both a political newcomer and supported by traditional political power, is struggling on the road to reform. The lack of governance foundations and resources, and the lack of capacity of the ruling team, have limited his reforms. His anti-corruption and de-oligarchic policies were met with collective resistance from interest groups, while his rule over the localities was weakened by the defeat of his own party in local elections.
Whether political or economic, Zelenskiy's reforms at home have failed. And this also made the people who supported him gradually lose confidence in him. Polls in February 2021 showed zelenskiy's party slipping to 11.9 percent in the country, ranking second in the country, with another pro-Russian party in the first place.
The domestic situation is not optimistic, but what about the handling of the international situation? After two days of news reports, I believe that you should not need me to describe too much. After this Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine is afraid that it will lose the opportunity to develop again and completely become a subsidiary of the United States and Europe or Russia.
Judging by the results, Zelenskiy's defeat was complete.
Looking back at the spirit of that year, and then looking at today's downfall, I don't know if Zelenskiy will regret the choice of that year. The ambitions of the newcomers to politics may have been carried away by the wind along with the smoke of war outside Kiev.