Vladimir Zelenskiy may just joke his way to becoming Ukraine’s next leader. A comic actor who plays a teacher who unexpectedly becomes president in a hit Ukrainian TV show after his rant against corrupt politicians goes viral, he is now pitching for the top job in real life and has a 10-point lead in some opinion polls.
It is Ukraine’s most unorthodox presidential campaign in history. After announcing his campaign on New Year’s Eve, Zelenskiy has shot into first place by contrasting his screen personality, a genial everyman who speaks in a gravelly bass, with public discontent against the country’s ruling class. His political party and TV show share the same name, Servant of the People.
On the stage in Bila Tserkva, a working-class city an hour south of Kyiv, he had the crowd in stitches. “Why does [Ukraine’s president, Petro] Poroshenko want a second term?” Zelenskiy quipped about the man he wants to replace. “So he doesn’t get a [prison] term.”
Between the improv sketches that make up much of the evening’s show from his comedy troupe, he and his co-hosts continued to skewer Ukraine’s ruling class with savage political humour. It felt like a campaign rally in the guise of a revue, and Zelenskiy is scheduled to continue performing right up to election day.
“This isn’t part of a pre-election campaign,” he said to laughs from an audience of hundreds, some of whom told the Guardian they had been given free tickets to the event. “You yourselves know what to do.”
In Ukraine, where only one president has won re-election since independence in 1991, one of Zelenskiy’s greatest assets may be that he has not been in politics long enough to earn voters’ wrath yet.
Ukrainian politics has turned against the establishment – perhaps for good reason. Even as the economy has stabilised, inequality and corruption remain rife, utility bills have risen and the afterglow of the 2014 revolution has faded with few prominent corrupt officials jailed.
Zelenskiy has sought to present himself as a new face in Ukrainian politics running against an entrenched elite. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
As one adviser to Zelenskiy’s rival Yulia Tymoshenko said: “If you leave Kyiv and start talking about real wages and living conditions, that doesn’t make you a populist, that makes you a realist.”
Despite unanswered questions about his own business ties to the powerful oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi, whose television channel 1+1 screens his political comedy, Zelenskiy has sought to present himself as a new face in Ukrainian politics running against an entrenched elite.
His programme nods to the exhaustion with politics and promises greater direct democracy: a pledge to serve only one term, national referendums on key issues and plans to lift immunity from prosecution for lawmakers, judges, and the president himself. Using a synonym for making arrests, one of his campaign slogans reads: “When spring comes, we’ll start planting.”
“There is a very high desire to see high-ranking officials, members of the ruling class arrested,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst. “He’s not the only one doing it, but it does sound more natural coming from him.”
Dmitry Razumkov, a political advisor to Zelenskiy, denied the candidate was a populist. “Everyone is tired of the system and is protesting against it. Zelenskiy is a uniting figure who can break the old system and replace it.”
But Zelenskiy’s lack of political experience outside of TV comedy hasled to criticism. A meeting with European ambassadors was a fiasco, several told the Guardian. “Their response was: is this some kind of joke?” one diplomat said. “Some of his programme looks fine on paper, but when it comes down to it, he can’t actually discuss his policies.”
Heightened scrutiny has also provoked questions about his company’s earlier business dealings in Russia and his reliance on Kolomoiskyi for access to the airwaves.
But this has failed to hinder his rise in the polls, with especially strong support among young voters. Zelenskiy has recently sought to make inroads among Kyiv’s progressive political elite as the 31 March first round draws nearer.
Aivaras Abromavičius, a former economy minister and one of several prominent reformers who has met Zelenskiy, called him a “good listener” and “ambitious”, but said he was vague on his ties to Kolomoisky and his precise political plans.
“He does not seem to have very strong views about most things,” Abromavičius said. “I see that as an advantage. Those views will be shaped if he becomes president. By someone around him, and the question is by whom. That is the key question.”
Born in Kryvyi Rih, a largely Russian-speaking industrial town in the country’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Zelenskiy helped build a comedy troupe of childhood and university friends into a multimillion dollar business. Some remain his closest confidants, working as actors and scriptwriters, and occupying key positions on his campaign staff.
“He was always the motor to our success,” said Vadim Pereverzev, a childhood friend and writer for Zelenskiy’s Studio Kvartal 95. “He’s the only one among us who was irreplaceable.”
He was not always drawn to politics. Oleksii Blanar, a former colleague who now works for a competing comedy studio, said Zelenskiy had rejected proposals to run for political office in the mid-2000s when the two worked together. Blanar, who voiced support for Poroshenko’s re-election, is sceptical of Zelenskiy’s run.
“Back then he was regularly being called into politics. He always said no, I don’t want to be a politician,” Blanar said during an interview at a Kyiv cafe. “I believe that he was changed by his new friendships and those around him,” adding that he meant Kolomoisky.
Zelenskiy’s campaign denies that Kolomoiskyi had any influence on his decision to run. None of his colleagues, including campaign staff, said precisely when Zelenskiy began considering his run for president.
Some, including Kolomoiskyi in a recent television interview, have suggested the idea dates to the 2015 debut of Servant of the People. Zelenskiy is shooting the third series, which is scheduled for broadcast shortly before the first round vote. Opponents are calling the new series an undeclared campaigning tool and demanding a delay in its broadcast.
Zelenskiy has met criticism of his business ties by saying that all television channels in Ukraine are controlled by oligarchs, so his relationship with Kolomoiskyi was necessary to do business.
His candidacy has also survived revelations that a business he controlled continued to earn money in Russia after he said he closed it after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Zelenskiy has said he now has exited the business.
The frontrunner for now, analysts caution his weak party structure and young support base could leave him vulnerable to more experienced campaigns as election day approaches.
“I think the original idea was to create a great show, almost a reality show, to create hype,” said Fesenko. “But now he is a favourite and everyone is discussing him. A lot can happen before the elections, but for now he’s still gaining, there’s a chain reaction of support for Zelenskiy.”