Polls show comedian Volodymyr Zelensky with a big lead over President Petro Poroshenko.
By Anton Troianovski Anton Troianovski Moscow bureau chief covering Russia Email Bio Follow April 21 at 5:04 AM BREAKING NEWS: Volodymyr Zelensky, who plays Ukraine’s president in a popular television show, has secured an apparent landslide win amid economic hardship and fatigue from conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The strategically pivotal country becomes the latest to turn to a politically untested leader.
“I voted for Zelensky because everything he said is true,” a secretary in Kiev, 45-year-old Viktoriia Bengalska, said. “It’s impossible to survive on this salary, prices have increased like crazy, and we were promised something totally different.” In his last-ditch appeal, Poroshenko told voters that handing the presidency to Zelensky would put the very existence of the country at risk. Zelensky’s slick, social media and TV-driven campaign masked the influence of the Kremlin and of unscrupulous billionaires, Poroshenko alleged.
“Who do you think I will vote for?” Dzhurynska said. “We’ll lose Ukraine with Zelensky,” she added, and broke into tears. On his sitcom, Zelensky plays a simple, morally upright schoolteacher who is elected president after his rant of outrage over corruption is caught on camera and goes viral. He then takes on Ukraine’s entrenched business and political elites, refusing to be bought. The third season of Zelensky’s show, “Servant of the People,” started airing last month and includes scenes of a prosperous, corruption-free Ukraine in the aftermath of the Zelensky character’s presidency.
Zelensky’s most powerful advantage in the runoff may be simply that he is not Poroshenko. A recent poll by Rating, a Ukrainian polling firm, showed Zelensky leading Poroshenko 58 percent to 22 percent among those planning to cast a ballot, with 20 percent undecided. Other surveys have shown Zelensky leading with a similar margin.
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