A professional comedian was yesterday sworn in as president of Ukraine but if he isn’t careful it may be Vladimir Putin who gets the last laugh. The election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy could be seen as a desperate attempt to lighten the political mood in a country that has lost 13,000 lives in a five-year struggle with Russian-backed forces in the east. Or it could be viewed as a despairing rejection of a political class that is seen as irredeemably corrupt. Either way, Mr Zelenskiy needs to get serious. High spending on defense squeezes the rest of the economy, unemployment is high and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have left the country in search of work. What’s more, oligarchs treat politicians as puppets.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
The Times view on Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy: Standing up to Putin
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy waves to the crowd after his inauguration ceremony in Kyiv on May 20, 2019.
