On the evening of April 21, 2019 local time, the two rounds of voting in the Ukrainian presidential election were completed. The two candidates, current President Petro Poroshenko, and comedian Zelenskiy received 25% and 73% of the votes respectively, and comedian Zelenskiy received a significant lead over the current president Poroshenko. On the evening of the 21st, Poroshenko held a press conference to admit defeat, and then called Zelenskiy to congratulate him. This marked the official emergence of the then 42-year-old Zelensky as the new president of Ukraine, which once surprised world public opinion.
1. Who is Zelenskiy?
The image comes from the internet intrusion and deletion
Zelensky was born in 1978 to a wealthy Ukrainian family to a scholarly, Jewish father who worked at the Krivorug School of Economics and an engineer mother. After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University of Economics.
In 1997, he collaborated with KVN, a well-known Ukrainian entertainment program team, to create a comedy performance group "95th Block" and as captain, began to script the show. With his unique talent for acting, he soon became widely popular in the CIS countries.
In 2003, Zelenskiy established a solo acting studio to engage in television content production, film production and entertainment touring, and Zelenskiy became its owner and manager.
After 2005, Zelenskiy joined the Ukrainian "International" channel as a main actor and creator. As ratings rose steadily, Zelenskiy began working on other projects. By this time, Zelenskiy had become a star in Ukrainian show business and was on the cover of The Ukrainian Magazine Fox six years later in 2011.
In 2015, with the hit TV series "Servant of the People", his popularity in Ukraine, who played the president in the play, rose rapidly, from "starring" as president to "running" for the president and finally being elected in 2019.
2, the man behind it
Running for president is not a feat that can be accomplished simply by bursting with popularity, but also requires strong financial support from financial giants and the efficient campaign strategy of professional campaign teams. In terms of campaign strategy alone, this is a highly professional technical job, and as a political amateur, without the support of a reliable political team, it is undoubtedly a fool's dream to achieve such a crushing election result of 73%.
Many media have revealed that behind Zelenskiy there is actually an oligarch whose energy cannot be underestimated. The oligarch is not low-key, having Israeli citizenship and a Cypriot passport because he is of Jewish origin. It is involved in many industries, including banking, publishing, television media, transportation and other industries, with total nominal assets of about 1.36 billion US dollars and actual assets of about 7 billion to 8 billion US dollars. Like all Ukrainian oligarchs, he was involved in political activities, having served as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a position that was removed in 2015 by former President Poroshenko.
3. Rich merchant and warlord
Since the civil unrest in Ukraine, more than 80 volunteer battalions (including the infamous Azov battalion) have sprung up in Ukraine to combat separatists in the east, nominally under the ukrainian government, but most of the salaries are paid by rich warlords such as Kolomoys, and Poroshenko cannot but be vigilant against them.
Late on the night of March 19, 2015, Kolomoiski led a group of armed men to occupy a state-owned oil company with the intention of using tough measures to reinstate the dismissed ally official, a move that caused strong dissatisfaction in the Ukrainian parliament, condemning him as "ashamed of his status as a civil servant", and several parliamentarians demanded Kolomoisky's resignation. Poroshenko, who wanted to tighten controls and ban private arming, also took the opportunity to say: "We will not have a governor with a private army here." Under pressure from all sides, Kolomoisky had to announce his resignation. However, although the strongman stepped down as governor, he is said to remain the de facto helmsman of Dnipro.
"Servant of the People," which helped Zelenskiy gain enough popularity for his campaign, is the product of a television station called "1+1" under his name. In the face of a large number of doubts from the media, Kolomois basic people have denied this, and he only admits that he is an ordinary fan of Zelenskiy. Judging from the whole process of the matter, if kolomoisky has been cultivating Zelensky from the beginning in order to seek to overthrow Poroshenko to achieve a political turnaround, it is too much of a conspiracy theory, but the energy and power behind it can be seen.