Volodymyr Zelensky

Zelensky dismissed Bohdan as Head of his presidential administration on 11 February 2020 and appointed Andriy Yermak as his successor the same day.

On 2 January 2020, a blogger posted photos of Zelensky vacationing in Bukovel.

On 5 January 2020, internet news site Strana.ua published photos of Volodymyr Zelensky with his family who without any publicity left for Oman and were staying in Al Bustan Palace, part of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel chain, near Muscat. Two hours after the publication, the Office of the Ukrainian President - which had been silent since 31 December 2019 - posted information confirming his visit to Oman. The Office of the Ukrainian President also stated that Zelensky had a meeting planned in regards to prospective investments and, according to the presidential press secretary, Zelensky arrived in Oman at his own personal expense. About four hours later, the Office of the Ukrainian President posted more information indicating that the President of Ukraine met with the Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs in Oman Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah and then the Executive President at State General Reserve Fund of Oman Abdulsalam Mohamed Al-Murshidi. However, the Presidential Office never published any information about timeframe and schedule of the presidential visit to Oman. The Ukrainian media publicized several criticisms regarding the visit to Oman in general and the official meetings as well as a comparison of the trip with president Poroshenko's visit to the Maldives two years prior. Zelensky personally ridiculed the latter's visit from a stage of his own Kvartal 95 Studio.

On 8 January 2020 the Presidential Office announced that Volodymyr Zelensky was cutting his trip to Oman short due to the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 plane crash in neighboring Iran the same day. The same day, internet news site Obozrevatel.com released information that on 7 January 2020, Ukrainian politician of the Opposition Platform — For Life Viktor Medvedchuk - who has exclusive relations with the current President of Russia - may have arrived in Oman. On 9 January 2020, investigative journalists from Skhemy (Schemes: corruption in details) reported that arrival of the President was delayed for almost a whole day and published photos of his arrival. Soon, rumors began that Zelensky may have had some additional meetings beside the ones that were announced. On 14 January 2020, Andriy Yermak dismissed the rumors as speculations and baseless conspiracy theories, while Medvedchuk stated that the plane was used by his older daughter's family to fly from Oman to Moscow. Later, Yermak contacted Ukrayinska Pravda and gave more details about the visit to Oman and the plane crash in Iran.

On 17 January 2020, the presidential appointee Minister of Foreign Affairs Vadym Prystaiko was unable to give answers during the "times of questions to the government" in parliament when the people's deputies of Ukraine asked him about the visit's official agenda, the invitation from Oman, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were preparing the visit, as well as how the President actually crossed the border while visiting Oman. On 20 January 2020, Prystaiko followed up by giving a briefing to the press in the Office of the President of Ukraine and saying that he would explain everything about the visit that when the time came.

On 6 March 2020, the Honcharuk government gave way to the government of Denys Shmyhal. At the time, there was disquiet in the press over the hasty departure of Honcharuk. In his 4 March address to the Rada, Zelenskyy recommitted to reforms domestic and financial, and remarked that he

In a March 2019 interview with Der Spiegel, Zelensky stated he went into politics to restore trust in politicians and that he wanted "to bring professional, decent people to power" and "would really like to change the mood and timbre of the political establishment, as much as possible".

During the election campaign Zelensky continued to tour with Kvartal 95. During the campaign his engagement with mainstream media was minimal. He talked to the electorate on social media channels and in YouTube clips. On 16 April 2019, 20 Ukrainian news outlets called on Zelensky to stop avoiding journalists. Two days later, Zelensky stated that he was not hiding from journalists but that he did not want to go to talk shows where "people of the old power" were "just doing PR" and that he just did not have time to satisfy all interview requests. Prior to the elections, Zelensky presented a team that included former Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk and others. During the campaign, concerns were raised over his links to the oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. President Poroshenko and his supporters claimed that Zelensky's victory would benefit Russia. On 19 April 2019 at Olimpiyskiy National Sports Complex presidential debates were held in the form of a show. In his introductory speech, Zelensky acknowledged that in 2014 he voted for Poroshenko, but "I was mistaken. We were mistaken. We voted for one Poroshenko, but received another. The first appears when there are video cameras, the other Petro sends Medvedchuk privietiki (greetings) to Moscow".

Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine on 21 April 2019, beating incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with nearly 73% of the vote to Poroshenko's 25%. Polish President Andrzej Duda was one of the first European leaders to congratulate Zelensky. French President Emmanuel Macron received Zelensky at the Élysée Palace in Paris on 12 April 2019. On 22 April, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Zelensky on his victory over the telephone. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk also issued a joint letter of congratulations and stated that the European Union (EU) will work to speed up the implementation of the remainder of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area.

Zelensky was inaugurated on 20 May 2019. Various foreign officials attended the ceremony in Ukraine's 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). In his swearing-in speech he dissolved the then Ukrainian parliament as his first act as president, in spite of pre-emptive attempts to block this move by the People's Front, which withdrew from the ruling coalition a few days prior to his inauguration.

Under a presidential decree signed on 21 May 2019, Zelensky appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Olena Zerkal as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration. However, a few hours later the text of the decree disappeared from the site of the president. According to Ukrayinska Pravda, Zerkal did agree to be the sole authorized representative of the international courts of Ukraine concerning Russia, but not to be a deputy head of the administration. On 28 May, Zelensky restored the Ukrainian citizenship of Mikheil Saakashvili.

The parliament also refused to approve Zelensky's dismissal of the country's Foreign Minister, Minister of Defence and Head of the SBU. In addition, on 6 June, lawmakers refused to include Zelensky's key initiative on reintroducing criminal liability for illegal enrichment in the parliament's agenda, and instead included a similar bill proposed by a group of deputies. In June 2019 it was announced that the president's third major initiative, which seeks to remove immunity from lawmakers, diplomats and judges, would be submitted after the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

On 11 June 2019, Zelensky dismissed the heads of 15 of Ukraine's oblasts (provinces) and the heads of the SBU (secret service) departments of five oblasts and asked parliament to remove the country's Prosecutor General from office. On July 8, Zelensky ordered the cancellation of the annual Kiev Independence Day Parade on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, citing costs. Despite this, Zelensky highlighted that the day would "honor heroes" on Independence Day, however the "format will be new". He also proposed to spend the money that would have been used to finance the parade on veterans.

On 11 July 2019, Zelensky held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the former's appeals to the Russian leader to take part in talks with Ukraine, the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom in Minsk. The leaders also discussed the exchange of prisoners held by both sides.

In the 21 July 2019 parliamentary election, Zelensky's political party, Servant of the People, won the first single-party majority in modern Ukrainian history in parliament, with 43% of the party-list vote. His party gained 254 of the 424 seats.

On 29 August 2019 during the appointment of the new government (Honcharuk government), the leader of parliamentary faction Servant of the People David Arakhamia informed that Arsen Avakov was reappointed as the Minister of Internal Affairs as "temporary" and "under personal responsibility" of the President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In September 2019 it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had allegedly pressured Zelensky during a July phone call between the two Presidents to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who took a board seat on Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, This report was the catalyst for the Trump–Ukraine scandal and the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. Zelensky has denied that he was pressured by Trump and declared that "he does not want to interfere in a foreign election."

In August 2019 Zelensky promised to lift the moratorium on exhuming Polish mass graves in Ukraine after the previous Ukrainian government banned the Polish side from carrying out any exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA-perpetrated Volhynian massacres, following the removal of a memorial to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Hruszowice, southeastern Poland.

Before New Year's Day, it was announced that starting on 31 December 2019, the newly elected President would spend the holidays at the official residence "Synohora" (Blue Mountain) in the Carpathian or Bukovel ski resort. Per tradition, the President of Ukraine recorded a video appeal to the nation to congratulate everyone on the New Year, which was aired on New Year's Eve (31 January 2019 – 1 January 2020). The video included statements of intent for reconciliation such as key phrases "it is not important what a street is named because it is well lit and asphalted" and "there is no difference at which monument you are dating your girlfriend".

Zelensky has come out against targeting the Russian language in Ukraine and the banning of artists for their (as viewed by the Ukrainian Government as anti-Ukrainian) political opinions. In April 2019 he stated that he was not against a Ukrainian language quota (on radio and TV) and that Russian artists "who have turned into (anti-Ukrainian) politicians" should remain banned from entering Ukraine. He simultaneously floated this idea about the Ukrainian language quota: "you can change them a little".

Zelensky stated in April 2019 that "of course" he supports the decommunization of Ukraine, but is not happy with its current form. In an interview with RBC-Ukraine in April 2019, Zelensky said that OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera, a controversial figure in Ukrainian history, was "a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing. He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine. But I think that when we name so many streets, bridges by the same name, this is not quite right." In that same interview, Zelensky goes on to criticise the overuse of tributes to Taras Shevchenko, a much less controversial Ukrainian poet and painter. Zelensky concludes: "We must remember the heroes of today, heroes of the arts, heroes of literature, simply heroes of Ukraine. Why don't we use their names - the names of the heroes that today unite Ukraine?"

In response to suggestions to the contrary, he stated in April 2019 that he regarded Russian President Vladimir Putin "as an enemy". On 2 May 2019 Zelensky wrote on Facebook that "the border is the only thing Russia and Ukraine have in common".

Although Zelensky prefers elections with open list election ballots, after he called the snap 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election his draft law "On amendments to some laws of Ukraine in connection with the change of the electoral system for the election of people's deputies" proposed to hold the election with closed list because the 60-day term to the snap election "leave any chances for the introduction of this system".

Zelensky announced his candidacy for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year's Eve address of President Petro Poroshenko on 1+1 TV Channel. At the time, Zelensky had already been one of the frontrunners in opinion polls for the election. Zelensky won the election with 73.22% of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko.

Zelensky worked mostly in Russian language productions. His first role in the Ukrainian language was the romantic comedy "I, You, He, She [ru; uk] ", which appeared on the screens of Ukraine in December 2018. The first version of the script was written in Ukrainian but was translated into Russian for the Lithuanian actress Agnė Grudytė. Then the movie was dubbed into Ukrainian.

The political party Servant of the People was created in March 2018 by people from the television production company Kvartal 95, which also created the television series of the same name.

Starting 31 December 2018, Zelensky led a successful, almost entirely virtual, presidential campaign to unseat the incumbent President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, in just three to four months. Zelensky clearly won both the first round of elections on 31 March, and the run-off election on 21 April 2019. One of Zelensky's presidential campaign promises was that he would only serve one term in office.

Six months before he announced his candidacy for the Ukrainian presidential election in 2019 (31 December 2018), Zelensky was already one of the frontrunners in opinion polls. After months of ambiguous responses, during the Kvartal 95 New Year's Eve evening show on the TV channel 1+1, he announced his candidacy for the election. In so doing, he up-staged the New Year's Eve address of President Petro Poroshenko on that particular channel. Zelensky later denied that up-staging the president was intentional, and attributed this to a technical glitch.

In an interview in December 2018, Zelensky stated that as President he would try to end the ongoing War in Donbass by negotiating with Russia. As he considered the leaders of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic (DPR and LPR) to be Russia's "puppets", it would "make no sense to speak with them". He did not rule out holding a referendum on the issue. In an interview published three days before the 2019 presidential election (on 21 April) Zelensky stated that he was against granting the Donbass region "special status". In the interview he also said that if he were elected President he would not sign a law on amnesty for the militants of the DPR and LPR.

Zelensky's assets were worth about 37 million hryvnias (about US$1.5 million) in 2018.

Zelensky's comedy series Svaty, In-laws, was banned for display on the territory of Ukraine in 2017. The ban was lifted in March 2019.

Prior to his political career, he obtained a degree in law and created a production company, Kvartal 95, which produces films, cartoons and TV comedy shows, including Servant of the People, in which Zelensky played the role of President of Ukraine. The series aired from 2015 to 2019. A namesake political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.

In 2015, Zelensky became the star of the popular television series Servant of the People, where he plays the role of the President of Ukraine. In the series, Zelensky's character is a thirty-something high-school history teacher who wins the presidential election after a viral video shows him ranting against government corruption in Ukraine.

In August 2014, Zelensky spoke out against the intention of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to ban Russian artists from Ukraine. Since 2015, Ukraine has banned Russian artists and other Russian works of culture from entering Ukraine. In 2018, the romantic comedy Love in the Big City 2 starring Zelensky was banned in Ukraine.

As one of the first acts of his presidency, Zelensky appointed Andriy Bohdan as Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. Prior to this, Bohdan was the lawyer of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Under the rules of Lustration in Ukraine, introduced in 2014 following Euromaidan, Bohdan is not entitled to hold any state office until 2024 (because of his government post during the Second Azarov Government). Bohdan, however, claims that according to the law, heading the presidential administration is not considered to be civil service work and therefore lustration does not apply to him. Bohdan suspended his juridical career after becoming Head of the Presidential Administration. Following his appointment Bohdan claimed that "the oligarchs already want the same rules of the game as other citizens". The other Deputy Heads of the Presidential Administration Zelensky appointed were mostly leading figures of Kvartal 95. The head of Kvartal 95, and a childhood friend of Zelensky, Ivan Bakanov, was appointed Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Secret Service.

In a 2014 interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine Zelensky said that he would have liked to pay a visit to Crimea, but would avoid it because "armed people are there". In August 2014, Zelensky performed for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol and later his studio donated a million hryvnias to the Ukrainian army.

Zelensky promised that his first bill "On People's Power" will provide a mechanism for referendums. (This promise was not kept—his first submitted bill was a law on public procurement of elections.) He also promised bills to fight corruption, including removal of immunity from the president of the country, members of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) and judges, a law about impeachment, reform of election laws, and providing efficient trial by jury. He promised to bring the salary for military personnel "to the level of NATO standards".

Regarding the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, Zelensky said that, speaking realistically, it would be possible to return Crimea to Ukrainian control only after a regime change in Russia.

Zelensky supported the 2013–14 Euromaidan movement. During the War in Donbass, he actively supported the Ukrainian army. Zelensky helped fund a volunteer battalion.

In a mid-June interview with BIHUS info representative of the President of Ukraine at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Andriy Gerus stated that Zelensky had never promised to lower communal tariffs, but that a campaign video in which Zelensky stated that the price of natural gas in Ukraine could fall by 20–30% or maybe more was a not a direct promise but actually “half-hinting" and "joking". Notably, Zelensky's election manifesto only mentioned tariffs once—that money raised from a capital amnesty would go towards "lowering the tariff burden on low-income citizens".

Zelensky was a member of the board and the general producer of the TV channel Inter from 2010 to 2012.

In 2008, he starred in the feature film Love in the Big City, and its sequel, Love in the Big City 2. Zelensky continued his movie career with the film Office Romance. Our Time in 2011 and with Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon in 2012. Love in the Big City 3 was released in January 2014. Zelensky also played the leading role in the 2012 film 8 First Dates and in sequels which were produced in 2015 and 2016.

The couple's first daughter, Oleksandra, was born in July 2004. In Zelensky's 2014 movie 8 New Dates she played Sasha, the daughter of the protagonist. In 2016 she participated in the show The Comedy Comedy's Kids and won 50,000 hryvnias. Their son Kyrylo was born in January 2013.

In September 2003 Zelensky married Olena Kiyashko. They both attended the same school.

At age 17, he joined the local KVN (a comedy competition) team and was soon invited to join the united Ukrainian team "Zaporizhia-Kryvyi Rih-Transit" which performed in the KVN's Major League and eventually won in 1997. That same year, he created and headed the Kvartal 95 team which later transformed into the comedy outfit Kvartal 95. From 1998 to 2003, Kvartal 95 performed in the Major League and the highest open Ukrainian league of KVN, the team members spent a lot of the time in Moscow and constantly toured around post-Soviet countries. In 2003, Kvartal 95 started producing TV shows for the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, and in 2005 the team moved to fellow Ukrainian TV channel Inter.

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyi (Ukrainian: Володи́мир Олекса́ндрович Зеле́нський ; pronounced [woloˈdɪmɪr olekˈsɑndrowɪtʃ zeˈlɛnsʲkɪj] ; Russian: Владимир Александрович Зеленский , Vladimir Aleksandrovich Zelenskiy; born 25 January 1978), commonly transliterated as Zelensky, is the 6th and current president of Ukraine. Before entering politics, he was a comedian, actor, screenwriter, film producer, and director.

Zelensky was born 25 January 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union to Jewish parents. His grandfather, Semеn Ivanovych Zelensky, served in the Red Army during World War II; Semеn's father and three brothers were killed in the Holocaust. His father, Oleksandr Zelensky [uk] , is a professor who heads an academic department of cybernetics and computing hardware at the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, used to work as an engineer. Prior to starting elementary school, he lived for four years in Mongolia in the city of Erdenet where his father worked. At age 16, he passed the TOEFL and received an education grant to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to study there.