A country under Russian bombs and a president who has become a national hero. How does Vladimir Zelensky, the star of Ukrainian humor, who was not destined to become president, manage to resist Vladimir Putin today? Who is Zelensky really? Red Line investigation by Pauline Revenaz, Nicolas de Labareire, Simon Terracier and Alexandre Funel.
From the very beginning of the conflict, he established himself as a military leader and father of the nation. As bombs rain down on his country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy risks going out into the streets on the eighteenth day of the conflict and visiting wounded soldiers in a military hospital.
Since February 24 and the start of the Russian invasion, he has been addressing the Ukrainian people and the international community from his desk, repeating over and over again that he will continue to carry out his duties in his office despite the death threats hanging over him. . While about 400 mercenaries from the Wagner group will be transferred to Kyiv to kill him, he films himself in his office, on the street, to refute rumors about himself:
“The Russians spread the rumor that he left Kyiv to take refuge in Lviv in western Ukraine or even in Poland. His physical presence is very important in the conflict, it is a denial of all the fake news that goes about him,” sums up Ulisse Gosset, columnist and foreign policy specialist at BFMTV.
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school humor
To the American administration, which offered to expel him in the first hours of the conflict, he replied that he “does not need a taxi, but ammunition.” At 44, President Zelensky is a national hero. While there are still 3 years, he made the country laugh as an actor.
It is in 1998, during a humorous competition in Sochi, that we find the first television traces of Vladimir Zelensky. He was then 20 years old, he was a member of a small amateur theater troupe from Ukraine. Originally from a small industrial town of Krivoy Rog, he studied at a local university in the family of a professor. Very quickly, he stood out for his desire to make people laugh and show himself on television. In 2006, he won the final of the show “Dancing with the Stars”, and is known in his country for his sketches … Not always in the best taste.
“There is, for example, a completely hilarious video where he plays the piano with his penis,” smiles Galia Akerman, editor-in-chief of Desk Russia.
Settling in Kyiv at the head of a thriving production company, he continued to act in films and TV series until his consecration and his biggest success, the series Servant of the People, which will attract 25 million viewers, more than half of the inhabitants of Ukraine.
Anti-system candidate
In this series, he plays the role of a professor who, after a speech highly critical of the authorities and the corrupt elite, becomes president. A harbinger of what will happen to the actor in just a few months. To everyone’s surprise, Volodymyr Zelensky announces himself as a candidate for the 2019 presidential election. A statement that was not taken seriously at first.
He barely meets, relying heavily on social media, before meeting outgoing President Petro Poroshenko in a 70,000-seat stadium debate where he surprises with his confidence. On the eve of the first round, Bernard Henry Levy comes out to meet this actor at the gates of power:
“I asked him who he looks more like, Kolyusha or Beppe Grillo, he replied:“ I look more like Reagan. Wanting to tell me that he will go to the end, ”recalls the French intellectual.
During his exchange, he even brings to mind the menacing figure of Putin, claiming he can make the Russian president laugh.
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Scandals and corruption
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy won a landslide victory with almost 73% of the vote in the second round. He then became the youngest president of the post-Soviet era. As soon as he was enthroned, he imposed his style: he appeared next to the people, relaxed, declared his difference to members of parliament, asking them not to hang his portrait in their offices. He seeks to desacralize the function at all costs and reform very quickly, while at the same time giving his government the nickname “turbo mode”.
But a year later, the Ukrainian president is bogged down in reforms that take time. He, a president elected on promises of social justice, is even implicated in a corruption scandal published by the Pandora newspaper in October 2021.
“He and his friends, his employees at his production company, were hiding money in tax havens. In Kyiv, it’s a shock, everyone says to themselves: “He deceived us, betrayed us,” sums up Ulysses Gosset, columnist and foreign policy specialist at BFMTV. .
Height change
His image is ruined. He also has to deal with the difficult situation in the Donbass, which has been at war with pro-Russian separatists since 2014. First of all, he fails to get anything from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Less than a year after the threat of spring 2021, when Russian troops massed near the borders with Ukraine, the head of the Kremlin went on the offensive, launching an invasion of Ukraine, and at the same time making it possible to change the dimension of Vladimir Zelensky.
Now from his office, the Ukrainian president coordinates military and diplomatic actions, communicates with leaders around the world. He urges the West to do more every day.
Faced with circumstances that have put him up against a wall, the Ukrainian president appears to have shrunk in size: he no longer plays clown and can find words to cheer his fellow citizens in the midst of an invasion. From Lvov to Kyiv, 91% of the population supports their president in the war, erected by many as a true hero.