Volodymyr Zelensky

Volodymyr Zelensky   (Actor, politician)
The President of Ukraine getting the Covid 19 vaccine
Born	25 January 1978 Kryvyi Rih
Nationality	Ukrainian
Alma mater	Kyiv National Economic University
Religion	Ukrainian Orthodox
Children	• Aleksandra Zelenskaya • Kiril Zelenskiy
Spouse	Olena Kiyashko
Interest of	Gonzalo Lira
Party	Servant of the People
President of Ukraine In office 20 May 2019 - Present Preceded by Petro Poroshenko

Volodymyr Zelensky is the President of Ukraine, elected in May 2019. He was formerly a comedian and actor who started performing in 1995.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Zelensky has become a global figure first lionized for his refusal to abandon Kyiv as Russian missiles struck, and now familiar from his omnipresence on social media, and his sometimes daily speeches to international legislatures and other audiences worldwide.

Throughout 2022, he became adored by Hollywood.

Early Career

Wikipedia writes: "Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. Prior to his acting career, he obtained a degree in law from the Kyiv National Economic University. He then pursued a career in comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played the role of the Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.".

Political career

On New Year's Eve 2018, Zelensky launched his presidential election campaign, having played the role of president of Ukraine in the series "Servant of the People" on Ukrainian television. His campaign was focused on bringing peace with the eastern territories, but a week after the inauguration as president he was threatened with death by Dmytro Yarosh, co-founder of the Right Sector, if he were to take actions in that direction.

Zelensky pays first visit to south Ukraine's war-damaged Mykolaiv.

“Zelenskyy said in his inaugural speech that he was ready to lose ratings, popularity, position.... No, he would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk—if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War.”
Dmytro Yarosh (2019) 

He wanted to meet Vladimir Putin in mid 2021.

His top aide Serhiy Shefir survived an assassination attempt on 22 September 2021. Zelensky himself says he survived more than 12 attempts on his life; it could be noted that while the United States tried to take out Saddam Hussein right at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war, there have been no leadership strikes (as of November 2022) on him during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine - he even was able to safely visit cities close to the front-line.

Highlight

Talking up the threat of a Russian invasion

On Tuesday 1 February 2022, Boris Johnson arrived carrying a red folder (believed by some to contain the Trident launch codes) for talks with President Zelensky. In a short clip from which the picture to the left is taken, a women can be seen running towards the two, grabbing the folder without the courtesy asking a UK Prime Minister if she can have it, and then moving away in another direction.

Pandora Papers

On 5 March 2022, Lowkey tweeted:

"The much-vaunted Pandora Papers revealed the patriotic President Zelensky was storing payments from his top funder, Israeli Igor Kolomoysky, in offshore accounts. Kolomoysky is also a funder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion & the Aidar Battalion".

Olena's $1.1m jewellery purchase

On 5 October 2023, George Galloway posted on X:

“Readers” and “independent” “fact-checkers” are contesting the dismissed #Cartier employee’s story that Mrs #Zelensky spent $1.1 million on jewellery in their NY store. There does seem to be a discrepancy in the date on the receipts she published - a date when Zelensky was in Canada not NY.

Perhaps Olena will publish her own receipt? How much DID she spend in the store? How much on the trip altogether?

How did the Zelensky’s amass such a vast fortune? How much are they worth? How many luxury properties DO they own around the world? Were the Panama Papers true? Were they sufficiently “fact-checked”? We have a right to know.

Taxpayers have given billions to Ukraine. Has it been misused? @MoatsTV

Cocaine addiction?

There are some videos, one being particularly noteworthy, that show behaviour that could indicate, that Zelensky may have a habit of cocaine consumption. In 2019 (before the election) he refused to have a blood test. In 2022 Zelensky uploaded a curious video of himself, in which he seemed to be under the influence of some substance.

 

Quotes by Volodymyr Zelensky

Page	Quote	Date	Source
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	“I asked them – are you with us?” Zelensky said. “They answered that they are with us, but they don’t want to take us into the alliance. I’ve asked 27 leaders of Europe, if Ukraine will be in NATO, I’ve asked them directly — all are afraid and did not respond We were left by ourselves. Who is ready to go to war for us? Honestly, I don’t see anybody. Who is ready to give Ukraine guarantees of NATO membership? Honestly, everybody is afraid”	24 February 2022	Russia Today
Azov Battalion	“In 2014, when the volunteer squads were defending the country, many of their appeals were quite radical against the Russian Federation. They were volunteers and it was their personal point of view. The Azov battalion are not volunteers, but are part of the National Guard. They are the official army of our state. Those who wanted to engage in politics - they were engaged in politics. Those who decided to be in the AFU, they became part of the AFU,”	May 2022
Ukraine/Death squad	“Bret Baier: I want to have you clear something up for us. And this is these reports about the Azov battalion that is said to be a Nazi affiliated organization, operating as a militia in your country, said to be committing their own atrocities. What should Americans know about that unit, about those reports? Volodymyr Zelensky: So Azov was one of those many battalions. They are what they are. They were defending our country. [Zelensky continues to explain that these volunteer organizations were later incorporated into the military and are not a self governing structure anymore] Back in 2014 there were situations when our volunteers were encircled and some of them did violate laws, laws of Ukraine and they were actually taken to court and got prison sentences.”	2 April 2022	Fox News

 

Appointments by Volodymyr Zelensky

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
Lyudmyla Denisova	Ukraine/Ombudsman	15 March 2018	31 May 2022
Mykhailo Fedorov	Ukraine/Minister/Digital Transformation	29 August 2019

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	“The bitter truth is that Washington's foreign policy establishment never actually considered Zelensky - or his predecessor Poroshenko - to be allies or partners of the United States. Overflowing with a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance, and extreme cynicism, Washington's elites have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to "regime-change" a Russia that, after its post-Yeltsin recovery, would no longer take its direction from them. The false gods of American exceptionalism are jealous ones indeed.”	Daniel McAdams	26 February 2022
Azov Battalion	“In 2014, when the volunteer squads were defending the country, many of their appeals were quite radical against the Russian Federation. They were volunteers and it was their personal point of view. The Azov battalion are not volunteers, but are part of the National Guard. They are the official army of our state. Those who wanted to engage in politics - they were engaged in politics. Those who decided to be in the AFU, they became part of the AFU,”	Volodymyr Zelensky	May 2022

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Halifax International Security Forum/2022	18 November 2022	20 November 2022	Canada Halifax Nova Scotia
Munich Security Conference/2022	18 February 2022	20 February 2022	Germany Munich Bavaria	Slightly less than 1/3 of the 664 of the participants have pages here
Munich Security Conference/2024	16 February 2024	18 February 2024	Germany Munich Bavaria	Annual conference of mid-level functionaries from the military-industrial complex - politicians, propagandists and lobbyists - in their own bubble, far from the concerns of their subjects
WEF/Annual Meeting/2020	21 January 2020	24 January 2020	World Economic Forum Switzerland	This mega-summit of the world's ruling class and their political and media appendages happens every year, but 2020 was special, as the continuous corporate media coverage of COVID-19 started more or less from one day to the next on 20/21 January 2020, coinciding with the start of the meeting.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War	blog post	7 June 2022	Craig Murray	"Ukraine is objecting to this plan (for Turkey to clear sea lanes of mines and to police the ships carrying grain) because it objects to the removal of the mines, which I should be clear were put down in the sea lanes by Ukraine to prevent amphibious attack on Odessa."
Document:BlackRock Plots to Buy Ukraine	Article	30 December 2022	Bradley Devlin	As a result of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, BlackRock the most influential financial institution in the world, plans to cash in on the destruction of that country.
Document:Faced with Donbass defeat, US and UK up the ante in Ukraine	Article	8 June 2022	Chris Nineham	Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa, argues: “The US and UK governments show no efforts or desire to achieve peaceful settlement of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”
Document:How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine	Article	13 February 2023	Medea Benjamin Nicolas J. S. Davies	President Eisenhower famously said that only an "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" can "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. An "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" would surely then demand that our government stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations.
Document:The Assange Case Invalidates US Criticisms Of Russia: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix	Article	14 April 2022	Caitlin Johnstone	Just the fact that the US and UK are imprisoning a journalist for exposing the war crimes of a war criminal president — just that one fact by itself — completely invalidates all criticisms of Russia from Washington and its allies.
Document:What Might A Ukraine Peace Agreement Look Like?	blog post	13 May 2022	Craig Murray	Currently nobody in power wants peace. It is often impossible to resolve a geographic conflict without some element that can be portrayed as endorsement of ethnic cleansing. These are the problems of peace.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.