Newsmaker: Volodymyr Zelensky — man under the spotlight

Update: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday a military operation in Ukraine to defend separatists in the east of the country, called the Donbas region.

If you are to believe information being released by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its allies, there are some 100,000 Russian troops gathering on the eastern borders of Ukraine, awaiting orders from the Kremlin to invade.

Or, if you listen to reports from Russia, those troops and all of their equipment, tanks and weaponry are taking part in military exercises.

Either way, all eyes are on Ukraine and what happens next. Given the build-up of military strength and Nato’s bulking up of its defences along its eastern flank and provision of defensive weaponry to Kyiv, the current tensions are very real and highly volatile.

A wrong move or one that is misinterpreted could result in a hot war flaring up — a perilous event that was avoided during the four decades of the Cold War. And it is the outcome of that Cold War, along with the gravitation of former eastern nations that once belonged in the Soviet sphere turning to the West, that has added to Moscow’s frustrations.

Many of those nations have, since the early 1990s, joined Nato — effectively bringing the Kremlin’s former adversary to its western flanks. And Ukraine is now pivotal, with Russian President Vladimir Putting seeking assurances that it can never join the Brussels-based military alliance.

Putin's next move

What will Putin’s next move be? The question has dominated conversation in the corridors of power in Europe and across the Atlantic as US President Joe Biden looks to ward off what he said would be “the most consequential thing” that has happened in the world in terms of war and peace, since the end of the Second World War.

Effectively, Russia and Ukraine have been linked by a common history since the ninth century, when Kyiv became the capital of the ancient state of Rus. In the early 20th century, the two nations and nearby Belarus formed the Slav core of the communist Soviet Union. In addition, many Russians and Ukrainians share family ties and speak closely related languages.

The two neighbours stayed aligned after the break-up of the USSR in 1991, but began drifting apart in the 2000s as Kyiv sought deeper integration with Europe.

The relationship had completely soured by 2014, when months of deadly protests and the toppling of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government culminated in Moscow annexing the Crimean peninsula.

The Kremlin also threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s east — Donbas — a conflict that simmered away sand claimed an estimated 14,000 lives.

That’s the history, and it’s this very serious and tense political backdrop that made Volodymyr Zelensky a popular household name in Ukraine. The man now centre stage as president of Ukraine first appeared on television screens as an actor in a popular comedy series, playing a humble history teacher who became president by fluke after a video of his foul-mouthed rant against corruption went viral online.

Fairy-tale story

It was a fairy-tale story that captured the imagination of Ukrainians disillusioned with politics. Then, in a surreal turn of events, life started imitating art.

In April 2019, Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine, this time for real. A key campaign message was peace in the eastern area known as the Donbas. As the Russian forces began to mass in the east, Zelensky has sharpened his rhetoric and intensified his appeals for Western support.

For a man who made his name as an artist, the challenges facing his presidency could not be more serious.

Born in the central city of Kryvyi Rih to Jewish parents, Zelensky graduated from Kyiv National Economic University with a law degree. However, it was comedy that turned out to be his calling.

As a young man, he regularly participated in a competitive team comedy show on Russian TV. In 2003, he cofounded a successful TV production company named after his comedy team, Kvartal 95.

The company produced shows for Ukraine’s 1+1 network, whose owner, Ihor Kolomoisky, would later back Zelensky’s presidential bid. Until the mid-2010s, though, his career in TV and films such as Love in the Big City (2009) and Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon (2012) was his main focus.

Unlikely political rise

The stage for Zelensky’s unlikely political rise was set by the turbulent events of 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after months of protests. Russia then seized Crimea from Ukraine and backed separatists who took control of large areas of the east, prompting the conflict in the Donbas.

A year later, in October 2015, Servant of the People premiered on 1+1. The satirical series cast Zelensky as an accidental president and inspired the founding of a political party with the same name. With the party’s backing, Zelensky turned fantasy into reality by declaring his candidacy for the presidential election in 2019.

He took on incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, who sought to portray Zelensky as a political novice. But Zelensky wrong-footed Poroshenko by framing his lack of political experience as an asset. His outsider persona resonated with voters and Zelensky was ultimately elected by a landslide. He was sworn in as Ukraine’s sixth president in May 2019.

He ran on a campaign to curb the extensive political and economic influence of Ukraine’s super-rich oligarchs — with critics sceptical given his links to Kolomoisky, whose wide-ranging business interests included a media empire that endorsed Zelenksy’s election campaign.

Now, as military tensions mount and reports that Russia intends install a leadership and government more favourable to its orbit, every move Zelensky makes in this crisis is being watched far more closely that any actor could imagine. This is his reality now. It doesn’t end when the lights go up.

With inputs from agencies