Biography of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (Ukrainian: Володимир Олександрович Зеленський, pronounced Ukrainian is the full name of the President of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy grew up as a Russian-speaking Russian citizen in Kryvyi Rih, a large city in the province of Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine. Before his acting career, she obtained a law degree from Kyiv National Economic University. He then pursued comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, producing films, animations, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played the role of the Ukrainian president. The series was broadcast from 2015 to 2019 and was very popular. A political party with the same name as a television drama was formed in March 2018 by Kvartal 95 employees.

Zelenskyy has announced his candidacy for Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election on the night of December 31, 2018, as well as President Petro Poroshenko’s pre-New Year’s talk on the 1 + 1 TV channel. Being out of politics, he has already become one of the leading candidates in the electoral process. He won the election with 73.2 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko. Expressing himself as a popular figure, he portrays himself as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption person.

As president, Zelenskyy has been a supporter of the e-government and the solidarity between Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking parts of the country. His social media style makes extensive use of social media, especially Instagram. His party won a landslide victory in a legal election held shortly after his inauguration. During his tenure, Zelenskyy oversaw the formal protection of the members of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, the country’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic, and the subsequent economic collapse, as well as some progress in the fight against corruption in Ukraine. Zelenskyy critics say that in taking power from the Ukrainian oligarchs, he has sought to consolidate power and strengthen his position.

Zelenskyy promised to end Ukraine’s long-running conflict with Russia as part of his presidential campaign, and he tried to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy’s administration faced tensions with Russia in 2021, which led to the launch of a full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Zelenskyy’s strategy during the Russian occupation was to silence the Ukrainian people and reassure the international community that Ukraine was not. seeking revenge. He initially distanced himself from warnings about the impending war, while seeking security guarantees and support from NATO to “resist” the threat. After the start of the attack, Zelenskyy announced military law throughout Ukraine and general integration. His leadership during the crisis has earned him international acclaim and has been described as a symbol of resistance to Ukraine.

Early life

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy was born to Jewish parents on January 25, 1978, in Kryvyi Rih, then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His father, Oleksandr Zelenskyy, is a professor and head of the Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, worked as an engineer. His grandfather, Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelenskyy, served in the Red Army (57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II; Semyon’s father and three brothers were killed during the Holocaust. Before starting elementary school, Zelenskyy lived for four years in the Mongolian city of Erdenet, where her father worked. Zelenskyy grew up speaking Russian. At the age of 16, he passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language and obtained a scholarship to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to leave. He later obtained a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then became a member of the Kyiv National Economic University and is now part of the Kryvyi Rih National University, but did not pursue a career in law.

Entertainment Career

At the age of 17, he joined the local team KVN (comedy competition) and was soon invited to join the Ukrainian joint team “Zaporizhia-Kryvyi Rih-Transit” which played in the KVN’s Major League and eventually won in 1997. In the same year, he created and led the Kvartal 95 team that later became the Kvartal 95 comedy team. From 1998 to 2003, Kvartal 95 played in the Major League and league. Ukraine’s highest open-air KVN, party members spend a lot of time. time in Moscow and always around post-Soviet countries. In 2003, Kvartal 95 began producing TV programs for Ukrainian TV channel 1 + 1, and in 2005, the group moved to another Ukrainian TV station Inter.

In 2008, she starred in the film, Love in the Big City, and its sequel, Love in the Big City 2. Zelenskyy continued her film career with the film Office Romance. Our Time in 2011 and Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon in 2012. Love in the Big City 3 was released in January 2014. Zelenskyy also starred in the 2012 film 8 First Dates and the sequels produced in 2015 and 2016. He recorded the voice of Paddington Bear in Ukrainian dubbing Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017).

Presidency

Zelenskyy and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Zhytomyr, October 2019.

Zelenskyy opened on 20 May 2019. Various foreign dignitaries attended the event in the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), including Salome Zourabichvili (Georgia), Kersti Kaljulaid (Estonia), Raimonds Vējonis (Latvia), Dalia Grybauskaitė ( Lithuania), János Áder (Hungary), Maroš Šefčovič (European Union), and Rick Perry (United States) [75] Zelenskyy is the first Jewish president of Ukraine. With Volodymyr Groysman as Prime Minister, Ukraine became the second country to have a Jewish President and Prime Minister. In his opening remarks, Zelenskyy dissolved the current Ukrainian parliament and called for early parliamentary elections (which were to be held in October of that year). One of Zelenskyy’s allies, the People’s Front, opposed the move and withdrew from the ruling coalition.

The New York Times reported that “Ukraine’s newly elected president is a Jew. So is his Prime Minister (Volodymyr Groysman). Not all Jews are happy.” The belief was “He should not run because we will have pogroms here again in two years if things go wrong, ”

On May 28, Zelenskyy restored the Ukrainian citizenship of Mikheil Saakashvili.

When they were elected “they were the only nation outside of Israel where the heads of the kingdoms and governments were Jews.”

Zelenskyy’s first major proposal to change the electoral system was rejected by the Ukrainian parliament.

In addition, on June 6, lawmakers refused to include Zelenskyy’s significant move to reinstate the criminal debt of illegal enrichment in the parliamentary system. In June 2019 it was announced that the third major presidential initiative, aimed at removing insecurities from lawmakers, strategists, and judges, would be introduced after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of July 2019.

US Vice President Mike Pence and the US delegation met with Zelenskyy in Warsaw on September 1, 2019

Zelenskyy meets with US President Donald Trump in New York City on September 25, 2019.

On July 8, Zelenskyy ordered the cancellation of the Kyiv Independence Day Parade at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, citing costs. Despite this, Zelenskyy emphasized that the day would “honor the heroes” on Independence Day, but “the format would be new”. He also suggested spending money that could have been used to fund the show for veterans.

In 2020, Zelenskyy’s party proposed changes to the Ukrainian media laws to increase competition and weaken the rule of the Ukrainian oligarchs for television and radio broadcasters. Critics say it threatens an increase in media scrutiny in Ukraine because its subconscious criminal responsibility for the dissemination of unintentional information could be misused.

Zelenskyy was criticized for a secret trip to Oman in January 2020 that was not published in his official plan and where he appeared to link his holiday with a state-owned business. Although the president claimed that the trip was paid for by Zelenskyy and not by government funds, Zelenskyy was widely criticized for being outspoken during the trip, which was badly likened to a secret holiday that his predecessor Peter Poroshenko took to the Maldives. , and what Zelenskyy himself was critical of at the time.

In January 2021, parliament passed a bill reviewing and amending Ukraine’s referendum laws, which the Constitutional Court of Ukraine had declared unconstitutional in 2018. Amending the referendum law was one of the promises of Zelenskyy’s campaign.

In June 2021, Zelenskyy submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a bill that created public registration of Ukrainian oligarchs, barring them from participating in the secret trade of state-owned enterprises, and forbidding them to donate money to politicians. Opposition leaders supported Zelenskyy’s goal of reducing the oligarchs’ political influence in Ukraine but criticized his approach, saying the public register would be detrimental to both, as it focused on the president; nor were they idle, as the oligarchs were merely a “symbol” of rampant corruption. The bill was passed into law in September 2021.

Cabinet and Administration

Zelenskyy has appointed Andriy Bohdan as head of the Ukrainian Presidential Program. Before this, Bohdan had been a representative of the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Under the Lustration laws in Ukraine, introduced in 2014 following the Euromaidan, Bohdan has no right to hold any state office until 2024 (due to his government position during the Second Azarov Government). Bohdan, however, asserted that because the head of the presidential administration was not considered a public servant, fraud did not work for him.

A few of the members of the Presidential Administration Zelenskyy appointed were former colleagues of his former production company, Kvartal 95, including Ivan Bakanov, who became the deputy head of the Ukrainian Secret Service. Former Deputy Foreign Minister Olena Zerkal has refused to be nominated as deputy prime minister but has agreed to serve as Ukraine’s representative in international courts regarding Russia. Zelenskyy’s applications for the post of foreign minister, defense minister, attorney general, and head of the Ukrainian security services have been rejected by parliament.

External relations

Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Taran, and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on August 31, 2021.

Zelenskyy’s first official trip abroad as the president went to Brussels in June 2019, where he met with officials from the European Union and NATO.

In August 2019, Zelenskyy promised to remove the announcement of the mass excavation of a large Polish population in Ukraine after the former Ukrainian government barred the Polish side from exhuming Polish victims of the Ukrainian massacre of Volhynian terrorists, following the removal of the monument. in the Ukrainian Revolutionary Party in Hruszowice, southeast of Poland.

In September 2019, it was reported that US President Donald Trump had blocked the payment of an estimated $ 400 million in a Ukraine-approved military aid package to pressure Zelenskyy during a July call between the two presidents to investigate allegations of Joe Biden and his party. son Hunter Biden, who took the board position at the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. The report was a source of embarrassment to Trump-Ukraine and an investigation into Donald Trump’s indictment. Zelenskyy denied that he was pressured by Trump and declared that he “does not want to interfere in the external elections.”

During a visit to the United States in September 2021, Zelenskyy participated in discussions and commitments with US President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense Jennifer Granholm, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. President Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska also participated in the opening of the Ukrainian House in Washington, D.C. On a similar trip, he met Apple CEO Tim Cook and Ukrainian people in senior positions at Silicon Valley technology companies and spoke at Stanford University. While Zelenskyy was in the U.S., shortly after delivering a speech at the United Nations, an assassination attempt was made in Ukraine on Serhiy Shefir, his closest aide. Shafir was not injured in the attack, although his driver was hospitalized with three gunshot wounds.

2021-2022 Russia-Ukraine disaster

In April 2021, in response to the deployment of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, Zelenskyy spoke with US President Joe Biden and urged NATO members to speed up Ukraine’s application for membership.

On November 26, 2021, Zelenskyy accused Russia and the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov of backing a plot to overthrow his government. Russia has denied any involvement in the coup, and Akhmetov said in a statement that “information obtained by Volodymyr Zelensky about attempts to lure me into some kind of outright lies. I am outraged by the spread of these lies, regardless of the president’s motives.”, Zelenskyy called for the first step against Russia.

On January 19, 2022, Zelenskyy stated in a video message that citizens of the country should not panic and urged the media to be “ways to inform more people and not to be too confused.” On January 28, Zelenskyy called on the West not to create “fear” in his country over Russia’s possible invasion, adding that ongoing warnings of an “imminent” threat of invasion endanger the Ukrainian economy. Zelenskyy stated that “we do not see much growth” than in early 2021 when Russia’s military construction began. Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden did not agree on how close the threat was.

On February 19, as concerns about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine increased, Zelenskyy warned a security forum that Western nations should relinquish their “comfort” status with Moscow. “Ukraine has been granted security guarantees to deliver the world’s third-largest nuclear weapon. We have no guns. And no security. But we have the right to promote a one-off policy change. That ensures security and peace,” he said.

In early February 24, shortly before the start of the Russian invasion, Zelenskyy wrote addresses to citizens of Ukraine and Russia. In part of the speech, he spoke in Russian to the Russian people, urging them to press their leadership to prevent war. He also denied allegations by the Russian government about the neo-Nazis’ presence in the Ukrainian government and said he had no intention of invading the Donbas region, while expressing his connections to the area.