How much do you know about Volodymyr Zelensky? He is the President of Ukraine. The West is drawing parallels between him and the Chinese student who stood in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tank Man; They say like him, Zelensky too is standing up to the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Volodymyr Zelensky from Western lens

Volodymyr Zelensky has become the most admired person of the Free World. His Legos are being sold.

There is Zelensky merchandise. So much has been written about him but, mostly by the West.

So far, we have seen Zelensky through the Western lens, one that sees Putin as a villain and Zelensky as the hero.

Putin, the man who tags Polar bear and Zelensky the president who dances to cha-cha.

Putin is cold Zelensky is funny, Putin barely talks about his family, Zelensky shares the photos of his wife and children.

Ever since the war broke out in Ukraine, the West has portrayed Zelensky as the antithesis of Putin, basically the good guy in this story, but this is the West’s story.

A look at Volodymyr Zelensky independent of the story. Who is he?

• Some say like Putin. Zelensky, too, has authoritarian traits.
• Volodymyr Zelensky is 44 years old.
• He grew up in the town of Kryvyi Rih.
• Zelensky’s father was a computer science professor.
• His mother was an engineer.
• He grew up in one of the better neighborhoods of the town.
• While the young men of Kryvyi Rih wore track suits, Zelensky wore classy suits.
• He liked English rock.
• He played the guitar.
• He even had a pair of blue jeans with his friend, Oleksandr Pikalov. The denim would go back and forth between the two, depending upon who had the date.

That’s how the story goes

The Soviet Union collapsed when Zelensky was growing up. The post-Soviet era gave him the chance to mock politicians in broad day light. A comedy show sprung up Russian TV called KVN, it bit teams from across former Soviet states against one another.

At 17, Zelensky became part of the team representing Kryvyi Rih. Soon after, he and his friends formed their own troop, which was named the 95th quarter, or quartal 95, critics say Zelensky’s comedy was quote unquote puerile, vulgar and working-class.

It is said that Zelensky’s mother once visited the rehearsal. She was not happy with what she saw. The distressed woman would pull Zelensky’s friend aside and ask, “He’s going to be a lawyer, isn’t he?” Zelensky did go on to study law, but he built a career in comedy.

Back in those days, oligarchs would often invite comics and satirists to their parties. Zelensky was invited to perform at Viktor Yanukovych’s birthday party. We are talking about the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in the Euro-Maidan revolution of 2014.

Did Volodymyr Zelensky perform before Yanukovych?

Reports say he did. When Crimea was annexed in 2014, Zelensky declared he did not want anything to do with Russia. His troop cut all ties with the Russian market It also donated one million Ukrainian hryvnia to the Ukrainian army.

Not only was he a successful comic, but he was also Ukraine’s most successful producer. He had a fancy office in Kiev with a panoramic view of the city. He bought a 15-room villa in Tuscany, one that he never declared during his presidential campaign.

By 2012, long before Crimea happened, Zelensky was sitting on some 15 million dollars. He did not lose much by cutting off ties with Russia, but he made immense gains in terms of his popularity. Soon, he started work on his most successful show, a sitcom called the “Servant of the people.”

He played a high school teacher named Goloborodko, who was caught on tape ranting about corruption, and this monologue went viral, and the teacher became president. Goloborodko sets out to chart his own path. He surrounds himself with old friends instead of the old ruling class. He appoints inexperienced people to office. It turns out all of this could have been a campaign announcement spread over three seasons. The show ran from 2015 to 2019. In the final hours of 2018, Zelensky announced that he would run for office. He had no experience but two big promises: one, he would fight corruption and confront Ukraine’s oligarchs; and two, he would end the war in Donbass.

Zelensky declared that you don’t need experience to be president; you just need to be a decent human being. Volodymyr Zelensky is a native Russian speaker. His career as a comic was all about depicting past presidents in a bad light, be it Viktor Yushchenko, Viktor Yanukovych, or Petro Poroshenko.

Zelensky promised to be nothing like them. He projected himself as the total alternative to these presidents. He received the support of at least 73% of Ukrainian voters, and he took office on May 2, 2019.

Like Goloborodko, Zelensky installed friends in high offices, such as the head of his production company or his lawyer, and they were all made part of the government, and here we are three years later.

And here we are three years later:

The war in Donbass has not ended, instead it has escalated into Europe’s biggest crisis since World War II. About 1000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine alone, more than 1500 people have been injured, and at least 3 million people have fled Ukraine. Zelensky failed to keep his promise, and he could not have failed in a worse way.

But he did rise to the crisis. When the US offered him to fly out of Ukraine, Zelensky said I need ammo not a ride. The president appears on TV every day and every day he is wearing a sap green t-shirt, he is visibly exhausted and mostly unshaved.

On the sixth day of the war, Zelensky addressed the European Parliament via video link. “Do prove that you’re with us”, he said and his interpreter appeared to choke on his tears, “Do prove that you will not let us go”, Zelensky continued. One observer later noted that it was as if Charlie Chaplin had morphed into Winston Churchill.

You see, this man knows TV. He’s pulling off what Putin had during the Chechen War. The daily press appearances, videos from war zones, sharing meals with troops, addressing parliaments around the world, and all of this is working. Zelensky has become the most popular politician in the United States, more popular than even US President Joe Biden. How tough should that be, you could ask.

Zelensky knows how to win people over, he knows gimmicks. After he became president, he appointed his press secretary through an open competition. There were 4,000 candidates, and each of them was tested on their sense of humor and tolerance for stress.

Zelensky also likes theatrics. He announced his election bid on live television on New Year’s Eve. He once held a 14-hour long press conference at a food market. Here’s something he does not like: comedy at his expense. If comic Zelensky looked at President Volodymyr Zelensky today, he’d have plenty of material for his scripts. One, the president has not been able to weed out corruption. Two, the Pandora papers have exposed Zelensky’s murky businesses.

Volodymyr Zelesky; A businessman or a Statesman?

Volodymyr Zelensky has offshore holdings through his own companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. His team says Zelensky is like any other business person in Ukraine, but you don’t get to be both a businessman and a statesman.

Zelensky has also displayed authoritarian traits. He has banned three TV stations in Ukraine. Observers say just like Putin, Zelensky may be seizing power from the oligarchs only to strengthen his own personal authority and advance his interests.

In 2020, Zelensky dismissed a general prosecutor because he reportedly refused to pursue cases that helped the president’s cause. A governor of a national bank was removed too, because he was not loyal enough. The deputy governor was removed too, because she had raised concerns about the bank’s independence.

Zelensky failed to keep his promise

Zelensky has failed to keep his biggest campaign promise. There is no peace in the Donbass. The region has now been taken over by Russian forces.

Zelensky may have also underplayed warnings of war. He first accused the West of hurting Ukraine’s morale, then he decided to spook the world. He said Russia would attack on the 16th of February. Later, he said he was only quoting media reports.

Today, Volodymyr Zelensky spends his days in bunkers, cheering his forces, appearing on TV now and then. He’s the only Ukrainian president to face a full-fledged invasion. He has the support of his voters. His approval ratings are at an all-time high.

There is obviously a threat to his life. Afterall Zelensky is Russia’s target number one. He is often heard telling global leaders that this might be the last time you see me alive and every time a parliament applauds Zelensky, he says “thank you, but we want you to do more.” There is no doubt he has risen to the occasion, but come to think of it, he did not have much of a choice either. Fleeing Ukraine means losing the presidency and a lot more.

The western media is drawing parallels between Zelensky and the emergency team that responded to 911. They’ve already pronounced him a hero, but it may be too early to say how history will judge this president of Ukraine.