Who is Volodymyr Zelensky?
Volodymyr Oleksandrovich Zelensky ( Ukrainian : Володимир Олександрович Зеленський ; born 25 January 1978) is the President of Ukraine, screenwriter, actor and director. In the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election , for which he was a candidate, he went to the second round and won. Even six months before he announced his candidacy on December 31, 2018, his name was at the top of the polls. In 2015, Zelensky played the Ukrainian president in the television series Servant of the People. Servant of the People party was founded in March 2018 by Kvartal 95, the producer company of the series.
Zelensky was born on January 25, 1978 in Kriviy Rig , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine ) to a Jewish family. His father, Oleksandr Zelenski , is a professor at the Kriviy Rig Institute of Economics , while his mother, Rimma Zelenska, is an engineer. Before starting high school, he lived in Erdenet, Mongolia for four years due to his father's job. TOEFL at age 16 He passed his exam and got a scholarship to study in Israel, but his father wouldn't let him go. He studied law at the Kriviy Rig campus of the Kyiv National University of Economics , but did not work professionally in this field.
Zelenski joined the local KVN (a comedy competition) team at the age of 17 and was soon invited to join the united Ukrainian team "Zaporizhia-Kryvyi Rih-Transit". This team showed up in the Major League of KVN and ultimately took first place in 1997. The Kvartal 95 team formed and led by Zelenski the same year later evolved into the Kvartal 95 comedy team. Kvartal 95 performed in the Major League and KVN's highest open Ukrainian league from 1998-2003, during which team members spent a lot of time in Moscow and toured frequently in the former Soviet countries . Kvartal 95 2003'started producing TV programs for the company and in 2005 the team switched to the Ukrainian TV channel Inter . In 2015, Zelensky played the president of Ukraine in the television series Servant of the People . His character is a high school history teacher in his thirties who won the presidential election after making anti-corruption statements in a viral video .
Zelensky supported the 2013-2014 Euromaidan movement and the Ukrainian Army during the Donbass War . In August 2014, he opposed the decision of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine to ban Russian artists from entering the country. In 2018, his romantic comedy movie Love in the Big City was banned in 2 countries. The People's Servant party was founded in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95, the producer of the TV series of the same name. In an interview with Der Spiegel in March 2019, Zelenski said he entered politics to restore trust in politicians, "to bring professional, decent people to power" and "change the mood of the political establishment as much as possible".
Zelensky announced on 31 December 2018 that he was running for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election . Even in the polls conducted six months before the candidacy announcement, Zelenski's name was at the top of the list. He continued to show with Kvartal 95 during the campaign period. [26] He announced that he would serve as president for a term if elected.
He officially took office on May 20, 2019. His first act as President was to dissolve the then Ukrainian parliament at the inauguration ceremony. Zelensky is on record as the first Jewish Ukrainian President. One of his first acts as President was to appoint Andriy Bohdan to head the Office of the President of Ukraine . On May 28, Miheil returned his Ukrainian citizenship to Saakashvili. Zelensky's first major proposal to change the electoral system was rejected by the Ukrainian parliament . Had the proposal passed, there would have been a transition from a majority vote system to a proportional representation system using secret party lists, and a reduction of the electoral threshold from 5% to 3%. The main reason why the proposal did not pass was that most of the parties in the parliament were opposed to the secrecy of the party lists. Parliament also did not approve of Zelensky 's dismissal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs , the Minister of Defense and the head of the Ukrainian Security Service . Additionally, on June 6, lawmakers refused to put Zelenski's critical attempt to reinstate criminal liability for illegal enrichment on the parliamentary agenda, instead adding a similar bill drafted by a group of MPs.
Zelenski married his high school friend Olena Zelenska in September 2003. The couple had a daughter, Oleksandra, in July 2004, and a son, Kirilo, in January 2013.
