Andreas Umland & Julia Kazdobina
In April 2019, the entrepreneur, actor, and showman Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected the sixth President of Ukraine with just under 75 percent of the vote. When he took office on May 20, 2019, he did so with the largest share of the vote that a Ukrainian presidential candidate had ever received in elections. At the age of forty-one, Zelenskyy was also by far the youngest head of state in Ukraine’s history—a decisive factor in his electoral success.
In the fall of 2024, Zelenskyy looks much older. His facial expressions and gestures have lost their former lightness. Unlike before 2022, the president hardly makes any jokes. His smile has become harder. Zelenskyy, like all Ukrainians, is suffering from the ongoing war with Russia.
The former showman also bears the burden of leading a nation facing an existential threat. Since 2022, Russia’s spokespeople have repeatedly made it clear that they reject Ukrainian claims of constituting an independent cultural community and nation-state. The enormous resources of the largest territorial state in the world have been mobilized for two and a half years to realize this prejudice. To save his country, Zelenskyy has to make morally difficult and often unpopular decisions every week. His main task today is to convince Ukraine’s allies not to abandon Ukraine and to provide it with sufficient weapons and money.
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