Volodymyr Zelensky - Updated Oct 2024

Updated On June 3, 2024
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Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine
Birth Sign
Aquarius

Birthday
Birthplace
Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky

Volodymyr Zelensky is a popular Ukrainian politician. Volodymyr Zelensky is also a former comedian and actor. Moreover, he is the sixth and present president of Ukraine since 2019.

Early Life and Childhood

Volodymyr Zelensky was born on January 25, 1978, in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. His age is currently 45 years old. He was born to his father,  Oleksandr Zelenskyy, and his mother Rymma Zelenska.

Likewise, his father is a professor at the Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology, where he also serves as department head for cybernetics and computing hardware. His mother is an engineer.

Likewise, he holds Ukrainian nationality and follows the Judaism religion. He was born under the sun sign Aquarius and is of white descent.

Education

Zelenskyy lived in Erdenet, a city in Mongolia, for four years before beginning elementary school, where his father had worked. He passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language when he was 16 and was awarded a scholarship to study in Israel, but his father prohibited him from going.

He eventually graduated from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, which was formerly a division of Kyiv National Economic University and is now a part of Kryvyi Rih National University, with a law degree, but he never worked in the legal profession.

Career and Professional Life

Entertainment career

He joined his community’s KVN comedy team when he was 17 years old. The United Ukrainian team “Zaporizhia-Kryvyi Rih-Transit,” which competed in the KVN Premier League and ultimately won in 1997, promptly requested him to join them.

He founded and oversaw the Kvartal 95 team in the same year, which ultimately evolved into the comedy group Kvartal 95. The members of Kvartal 95 spent a lot of time in Moscow and frequently visited post-Soviet nations while playing in the Premier League and the top open Ukrainian league of KVN from 1998 to 2003. Kvartal 95 began creating TV shows in 2003 for Ukrainian TV channel 1+1. In 2005, the group relocated to Inter, another Ukrainian TV channel.

He acted in the 2008 film Love in the Big City and its follow-up, Love in the Big City 2, both of which were sequels. Office Romance marked the continuation of Zelenskyy’s filmography. 2011’s Our Time and 2012’s Rzhevsky vs. Napoleon are two examples.  January 2014 saw the release of Love in the Big City 3. In the 2012 movie 8 First Dates and its 2015 and 2016 sequels, Zelenskyy also had the starring role. For the Ukrainian dubs of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2, he recorded the voice of Paddington Bear (2017).

In October 2021, the Pandora Papers made known that Zelenskyy, his top adviser, and the head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Ivan Bakanov, had a network of offshore businesses in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. Some of these businesses held pricey real estate in London. Around the time of his 2019 election, Zelenskyy transferred Sergei Shefir ownership of his shares in a significant offshore corporation, but it appears that the two men worked out a deal so that Zelenskyy’s family would continue to receive payments from these corporations.

2019 presidential campaign

Servant of the People is the name of the political party that members of Zelenskyy’s production firm Kvartal 95 registered in March 2018. Zelenskyy had appeared in the show under that identity for the previous three years. Even though Zelenskyy denied having any immediate plans to run for office and claimed he had just registered the party name to prevent others from using it, there was considerable speculation that he was going to do so.

He was already in the lead in polls as of October 2018, three months before he announced his candidacy and six months before the presidential election.

Volodymyr Zelensky

Caption: Volodymyr Zelensky was captured during his interview
Source: Instagram

Zelenskyy declared his candidacy for president of Ukraine on December 31, less than four months before the election, at the New Year’s Eve evening show on TV channel 1+1, following months of unclear remarks.

Zelenskyy said that the fact that his announcement dominated the New Year’s Eve speech of the current president Petro Poroshenko on the same channel was unintentional and that it was caused by a technical error.

On March 31, 2019, Zelenskyy certainly won the first round of voting.  On April 21, 2019, in the second round, he earned 73% of the vote to Poroshenko’s 25%, becoming the president of Ukraine.

One of the first European leaders to congratulate Zelenskyy was the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda.  On April 12, 2019, Zelenskyy was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris.  Donald Trump, the president of the United States, congratulated Zelenskyy on his victory over the phone on April 22.

2021-2022 Russo-Ukrainian Crisis

Zelenskyy spoke to American President Joe Biden in April 2021 in reaction to the Russian military build-up at the Ukrainian border and asked NATO members to accelerate Ukraine’s application for membership. Zelenskyy charged Rinat Akhmetov, a Russian and Ukrainian businessman, of supporting a plot to destroy his administration on November 26, 2021.

In a statement, Akhmetov said that Russia had denied any role in a coup attempt “It is a complete falsehood that Volodymyr Zelenskiy claimed that I was being approached for some sort of coup. Regardless of the president’s intentions, I find the spread of this untruth to be abhorrent.” Zelenskyy demanded that preventive action be taken against Russia in December 2021.

Zelenskyy asked the media to be “methods of mass information and not mass panic” in a video message delivered on January 19, 2022, to the nation’s population. On January 28, Zelenskyy appealed with the West not to spread “panic” over a potential Russian invasion in his nation, adding that repeated claims of an “imminent” invasion risk harming Ukraine’s economy.

Zelenskyy claimed that compared to the beginning of 2021, when Russia’s military build-up began, “we do not see a higher development.” In terms of how imminent the threat was, Zelenskyy and Vice President Joe Biden disagreed.

Zelenskyy recorded his address to the people of both Russia and Ukraine in the early hours of February 24, just before the Russian war began. He highlighted his ties to the region and refuted charges made by the Russian government that there were neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government. He also said that he had no intention of striking the Donbas region.

Achievements

Volodymyr Zelensky received one of Slovakia’s highest honors, the State Award of Alexander Dubek, on March 27, 2022. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has been linked by the prime minister of Slovakia, Eduard Heger, to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Zelenskyy was chosen by the British Financial Times as Person of the Year in 2022.

Volodymyr Zelensky – Net Worth 2024

This popular Ukrainian politician and former comedian and actor has earned a hefty amount of money throughout his successful career. He has a net worth of $596 million as of 2023. Likewise, his annual salary is $60 million.

Relationship Status

Talking about his relationship status, Volodymyr Zelensky is a married man. Volodymyr Zelensky tied the knot Olena Kiyashko, whom he had gone to school and university with, in September 2003. In Kvartal 95, Kiyashko was a scriptwriter. Oleksandra, the couple’s first child, was born in July 2004.

Kyrylo, their son, was conceived in January 2013. Their daughter portrayed Sasha, the protagonist’s daughter, in Zelenskyy’s 2014 film 8 New Dates. She took part in and won $50,000 in the 2016 episode of The Comedy Comet Company Comedy’s Kids. The family is a Kyiv resident.

Volodymyr Zelensky

Caption: Volodymyr Zelensky with his wife, Olena Kiyashko
Source: People

Social Media

Reflecting on his social media presence, Volodymyr Zelensky is active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. His Facebook account ‘Volodymyr Zelenskyy’ has gained more than 3.2 million followers. Likewise, there are more than 17.1 million followers on his Instagram account ‘@zelenskiy_official’. He joined Twitter in April 2009 and has over 7.2 million followers there.

Volodymyr Zelensky – Body Measurements

Coming to his physical stats, Volodymyr Zelensky has a slim body type with a height of 5 feet 6 inches. And he weighs 68kg. However, other information about his body measurements like body size, waist size, shoe size, dress size, and so on is not available. He has a pair of dark brown eyes with dark brown hair.

Volodymyr Zelensky

Caption: Volodymyr Zelensky posing for a photo
Source: Wall Street Journal