Speakers blasted loud music, guests played ping-pong, and the wine flowed. Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s headquarters, stationed in Kyiv’s Parkovyi convention center, transformed into a crowded party on April 21.
There was an occasion to celebrate: it was Election Day and the actor Zelenskiy was preparing to be elected as the next President of Ukraine.
Minutes before the first exit poll results came in, Zelenskiy took to the stage in the company of his wife and campaign team members as the theme song of his television series, “Servant of the People,” echoed through the hall. In the show, Zelenskiy plays school teacher Vasyl Holoborodko, who by a sheer stroke of coincidence becomes Ukraine’s president.
Three-and-a-half years after the first season premiered, its plot has become reality: comedic actor Zelenskiy took a leap into national politics and won the presidency in a historic landslide.
Zelenskiy won over 73 percent of the vote, leading in all but one region of Ukraine and crushing his opponent, incumbent President Petro Poroshenko. Soon, Poroshenko — a man buffeted to presidency by the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution — had admitted defeat.
Historic event
Zelenskiy’s victory was predictable. Both the results of the first round of the election and polling data indicated it was unavoidable.
But it also came as an unprecedented triumph of the democratic process in a post-Soviet country: a political outsider had defeated a sitting president, a man who commands significant administrative resource. Zelenskiy won by the biggest margin in the history of Ukraine, getting nearly 49 percent more votes than his opponent. At 41, he will also become the youngest president in Ukraine’s history, potentially representing a new generation of political leadership in the country.
The significance of the victory was not lost on the candidate.
“While I am not yet the president, I can say this as a Ukrainian citizen. To all post-Soviet countries: Look at us. Everything is possible,” Zelenskiy said in his brief speech after the exit poll results came in.
“Until the end, everyone on the team didn’t believe it was happening,” Borys Shefir, the co-founder of Zelenskiy’s Kvartal 95 studio, told the Kyiv Post soon after. “I thought that something might fall through at the last minute, especially after last night’s court hearing.”
The previous night, a Kyiv court decided to review a lawsuit submitted by a man named Andriy Khilko, who had sought the cancellation of Zelenskiy’s registration as a presidential candidate. The hearing threw both candidates’ camps into a slight panic. Eventually, however, the judge rejected the claim.
Kvartal 95, Zelenskiy’s life work, has been preparing to continue without its leader. His managerial functions will be distributed among other members of the collective. Rehearsals for the new season of the Vecherniy Kvartal comedy show began last weekend with a new actor. And the League of Laughter, a team comedy competition hosted by Zelenskiy, will get a new host, said Oleksandr Pikalov, a Kvartal 95 actor.
“We will joke about Zelenskiy, of course,” he told the Kyiv Post at the headquarters, where he came to celebrate the victory of his old friend from Krivyi Rih.
In “Servant of the People,” Pikalov plays Holoborodko’s childhood friend who becomes Ukraine’s defense minister. But in real life, public office doesn’t interest him, Pikalov said.
Team
A comedian who became the president on television gets elect president in real life. That’s the story that has captured headlines around the world.
But for Zelenskiy’s team and the 13.5 million Ukrainians who voted for him, the comedian-turned-politician is hope for positive change.
On election day, the Kyiv Post surveyed voters exiting several polling places across the city. In many cases, they said they had voted for Poroshenko in 2014, but that he did not live up to their hopes. For them, Zelenskiy offered an alternative.
Ukraine is “just following the global trend of replacing old elites,” said Aivaras Abromavicius, Ukraine’s former economy minister who advised Zelenskiy’s campaign. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president in the United States, and there have been other examples geographically closer to Ukraine.
Last August, the Slovenian parliament appointed a former comedian, Marjan Sarec, as Prime Minister. In March, Slovakia elected lawyer and activist Zuzana Caputova as its youngest and first female president. In the Lithuanian presidential race, one of the leading candidates is Gitanas Nauseda, an economist known for his television appearances and amorphous political positions.
Although Abromavicius advised Zelenskiy’s campaign, he doesn’t see himself in the newly elected president’s future administration, he told the Kyiv Post.
“I’m happy working in the private sector,” he said. “I will remain as a non-staff adviser to Zelenskiy if he needs some help or advice. But we never had an agreement that I would get some position in exchange for my counsel.”
Another former member of the government, ex-Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, also said that roles have not been assigned yet in Zelenskiy’s future administration. His nominees for five top positions — security service chief, central bank chairperson, prosecutor general, defense minister and foreign minister — remain unclear.
“Zelenskiy’s priority will be continuing Ukraine’s integration with the European Union. However, it’s important for us, Ukrainians, to understand what we want ourselves,” Danylyuk said. “Why do reforms have to be imposed upon us by the International Monetary Fund? Why don’t we do what citizens demand from the government?”
Last week, two Kyiv courts ruled in favor of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky in three separate cases dealing with the 2016 nationalization of PrivatBank, which Kolomoisky and his business partner Hennadiy Boholyubov previously owned.
One of the courts effectively canceled the nationalization and ruled that the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, led by Danylyuk at the time, and the National Bank had no grounds to declare the PrivatBank insolvent and take it under government control.
“It is hard for me to comment on the case. The judiciary reform that President Poroshenko bragged about turned out to be fake. We need to relaunch the judiciary reform to secure the protection of citizens’ rights and rights of business,” Danylyuk said.
Abromavicius and Danylyuk are among a pool of advisers and experts on whom Zelenskiy has relied over the course of his campaign. He has never held any government or political job and was deemed by opponents unqualified for the office of the president and the commander-in-chief of a country at war.
“The president can’t be knowledgeable about everything: from the defense sector to utilities tariffs. It’s very good that Zelenskiy understands that,” said Andriy Gerus, who advises Zelenskiy on energy and household utilities.
Besides Zelenskiy’s team, the headquarters attracted a motley crowd of visitors.
European Parliament member Rebecca Harms of Germany swung by after a long day with a European observation mission.
“It is very important that a war-torn country like Ukraine managed to hold a democratic election and free vote,” she told the Kyiv Post. “I was impressed by Mr. Poroshenko, who congratulated Mr. Zelenskiy as the winner of the election minutes after the (first) exit polls had been published.”
“The European Union stands with Ukraine and the Ukrainian president elected in a democratic way. What matters for the EU is the continuation of the reforms that we have begun over the past five years,” Harms added.
Russian political consultant and commentator Stanislav Belkovsky also showed up at Zelenskiy’s celebration. He said he flew in to Ukraine because he had predicted Zelenskiy’s victory three months ago, and it was important for him to be present for the event, but said he didn’t work for Zelenskiy’s campaign.
“Zelenskiy is a more European politician than Poroshenko. He’s from a new generation. He wasn’t brought up in the Soviet Union,” he told the Kyiv Post. “I’m very optimistic about the European future of Ukraine.”
Celebrations continued after midnight in private, as the “Ze team” retreated to another room where media was not allowed. Soon, U.S. President Donald Trump — a populist political outsider — and French President Emmanuel Macron — one of Europe’s youngest leaders — reportedly called Zelenskiy to congratulate him.
