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Volodymyr Zelenskyy Bio, Net Worth, Wife, Children, Age, Facts, Family, Religion, Nationality, Parents, Height, Career, Party, TV Shows, Education

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian politician, former actor as well as a comedian. He has been serving as the president of Ukraine since 2019. In the initial phase of his career, he pursued comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produces films, cartoons, and TV shows including Servant of the People (2015-2019), in which Zelenskyy played the role of president of Ukraine. In March 2018, a political party bearing the same name as the television show was created by employees of Kvartal 95. He announced his candidacy for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election on 31st  December 2018. He won the election with 73.2 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko. Identifying as a populist, he has positioned himself as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption figure. During his administration, he oversaw the lifting of legal immunity for members of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic recession, and some progress in tackling corruption. He also promised to end Ukraine’s protracted conflict with Russia as part of his presidential campaign and attempted to engage in dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. His administration faced an escalation of tensions with Russia in 2021, culminating in the launch of an ongoing full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. After the commencement of the invasion, he declared martial law across Ukraine and general mobilization. 

‘Russia Attacking Schools, Ambulances, Everything’: Ukraine’s President

Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday (February 17, 2022) that Moscow was bombarding residential areas in Ukraine as its invading forces sought to push deeper into the pro-Western country. “The past night in Ukraine was brutal, again shooting, again bombardments of residential areas, civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said in an address posted online. “Today, there is not a single thing in the country that the occupiers do not consider an acceptable target. They fight against everyone. They fight against all living things — against kindergartens, against residential buildings, and even against ambulances. He said Russian forces were “firing rockets and missiles at entire city districts in which there isn’t and never has been any military infrastructure”. 

What is Volodymyr Zelenskyy Famous For?

  • Being a Ukrainian politician, former actor, and comedian. 
  • For serving as the president of Ukraine since 2019.

Where is Volodymyr Zelenskyy From?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born on 25th January 1978 which makes him the present age of 44 as of 2022. He is from Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. His birth name is Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy. His father, Oleksandr Zelenska works as a professor at the ‘Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics’ where he leads an academic department of computing hardware and cybernetics. Whereas his mother, Rimma Zelenska, worked as an engineer. His grandfather, Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelenskyy, served in the Red Army (in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II; Semyon’s father and three brothers were killed in the Holocaust. He spent his early childhood in Erdenet, Mongolia, where he lived for four years. He holds Ukrainian nationality and his ethnic background is Ukrainian-White. His race is White. His Zodiac sign is Aquarius and his religion is Judaism as he was born to Jewish parents. 

Regarding his education, he passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language at the age of 16 and also he received an education grant to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to go. He then earned a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then a department of Kyiv National Economic University and now part of Kryvyi Rih National University, but did not go on to work in the legal field

Volodymyr Zelenskyy Early Career Timeline

  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s initial career began by joining the local KVN team (a comedy competition) at the age of 17.
  • Shortly, he was invited to join the united Ukrainian team “Zaporizhia-Kryvyi Rih-Transit” which performed in the KVN’s Major League, and eventually, he won in 1997.
  • Then, he created the Kvartal 95 team which later transformed into the comedy outfit “Kvartal 95”. 
  • From the year 1998 to 2003, “Kvartal 95” performed in the Major League and the highest open Ukrainian league of KVN, the team members spent a lot of their time in Moscow and constantly toured around post-Soviet countries. 
  • Soon, Kvartal 95 started producing TV shows for the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 by 2003, and then, the team moved to fellow Ukrainian TV channel Inter by 2005.
  • Next, he starred in the feature film Love in the Big City, and its sequel, Love in the Big City 2 in 2008 which was followed by “Office Romance”, “Our Time”, “Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon”, “Love in the Big City 3”, “8 First Dates”, “Love in the Big City 2”. In 2015, he became the star of the television series “Servant of the People”. His comedy series “Svaty” (“In-laws”) was banned for display on the territory of Ukraine in 2017. 
  • His first role in the Ukrainian language was the romantic comedy “I, You, He, She”. 
  • Additionally, he was a member of the board and the general producer of the TV channel Inter from 2010 to 2012. 
  • He spoke out against the intention of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to ban Russian artists from Ukraine and since 2015 it is banned. 

Political Career Timeline

  • In March 2018, “Kvartal 95” created a political party named ‘Servant of the People’.
  • In a March 2019 interview with Der Spiegel, Zelenskyy stated he went into politics to restore trust in politicians and that he wanted “to bring professional, decent people to power” and “would really like to change the mood and timbre of the political establishment, as much as possible”.
  • Six months before he announced his candidacy for the Ukrainian presidential election in 2019 (31 December 2018), Zelenskyy was already one of the frontrunners in opinion polls.
  • In December 2018, he announced his candidacy for the 2019 presidential election. 
  • In an interview with a German weekly news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’, he said that he became a politician to bring decent and professional people to power.
  • He toured with “Kvartal 95” during his election campaign. 
  • Before the elections, he formed a team that included veteran politician Oleksandr Danylyuk among others. 
  • During the election, he stated that he was running for only one term.
  • In May 2021, he stated that it was too early to say whether he will run for a second term, but this decision would depend on his attitude to him in society and would be influenced by his family.
  • He was elected President of Ukraine on 21 April 2019, beating the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko with nearly 73 percent of the vote to Poroshenko’s 25 percent. He was inaugurated on 20 May 2019. 
  • He was noted to have been the first Jewish President of Ukraine and with Volodymyr Groysman as Prime Minister, Ukraine was the second country to have both a Jewish President and Prime Minister.
  • On 4th June, he arrived in Brussels on his first official foreign visit as president, meeting with European Union and NATO officials, including Jens Stoltenberg, Jean Claude Juncker, and Donald Tusk. 
  • On 11th June 2019, he dismissed the heads of 15 of Ukraine’s oblasts (provinces) and the heads of the SBU (secret service) departments of five oblasts and asked parliament to remove the country’s Prosecutor General from office.
  • On 11th July 2019, he held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the former’s appeals to the Russian leader to take part in talks with Ukraine, the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom in Minsk.
  • In the 21 July 2019 parliamentary election, his political party, Servant of the People, won the first single-party majority in modern Ukrainian history in parliament, with 43 percent of the party-list vote. His party gained 254 of the 424 seats.
  • On 29th August 2019, during the appointment of the new government (Honcharuk government), the leader of parliamentary faction Servant of the People David Arakhamia announced that Arsen Avakov was reappointed as the Minister of Internal Affairs as “temporary” and “under personal responsibility” of the president, Volodymyr Zelensky. 
  • In September 2019, it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had allegedly pressured Zelenskyy during a July phone call between the two presidents to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who took a board seat on Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.
  • In December 2019, he visited Azerbaijan and met with President Ilham Aliyev. Zelenskyy said: “We are doing everything to restore peace and the territorial integrity of our state. Unfortunately, the same threat faces Azerbaijan, which seeks to restore its territorial integrity. But I am convinced that our countries will successfully pass these tests.”
  • He dismissed Bohdan as head of his presidential administration on 11 February 2020 and appointed Andriy Yermak as his successor the same day. 
  • On 24 March 2021, Zelenskyy signed the Decree 117/2021 approving the “strategy for de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”
  • Next, he was engaged in high-level talks and commitments with U.S. President Joe Biden, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, and the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 
  • Further, he went to Silicon Valley and met with tech companies. Moreover, he also met with Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook spoke at Stanford University and met with the California National Guard.
  • As of April 2021, he spoke to American president Joe Biden and urged NATO members to speed up Ukraine’s request for membership. 
  • He accused Russia and Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov of backing a plan to overthrow his government on 26th November 2021.
  • In December 2021, he called for preemptive action against Russia.
  • On 19th January 2022, he said in a video message that the country’s citizens should not panic and appealed to the media to be “methods of mass information and not mass hysteria”. 
  • On 28th January, he called on the West not to create a “panic” in his country over a potential Russian invasion, adding that constant warnings of an “imminent” threat of invasion are putting the economy of Ukraine at risk.
  • He said that “we do not see a bigger escalation” than in early 2021 when Russia’s military build-up started. 
  • On 19th February, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, Zelenskyy warned a security forum that Western nations should abandon their “appeasement” attitude toward Moscow. “Ukraine has been granted security assurances in exchange for giving up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. We don’t have any firearms. And there’s no security… But we have a right to urge a transformation from an appeasement policy to one that ensures security and peace,” he stated.
  • On February 24, 2022, Putin announced that Russia was initiating a “special military operation” in the Donbas. Russian missiles struck a number of military targets in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy declared martial law. Then, he announced general mobilization. 
  • After a day, Zelenskyy said that his intelligence services had identified him as Russia’s top target, but that he is staying in Kyiv and his family will remain in the country. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” he said.
  • In the early hours of 26th February, during the most significant assault by Russian troops on the capital of Kyiv, the United States government urged Zelenskyy to evacuate to a safer location, and said it stood ready to assist him in such an effort. Zelenskyy turned down the offer and opted to remain in Kyiv with its defense forces, saying that “the fight is here [in Kyiv]; I need ammunition, not a ride”.

Who is Volodymyr Zelenskyy Wife?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a married man. He tied a knot to his beautiful wife, Olena Kiyashko in September 2003. Zelenskyy and Kiyashko went to the same grammar school. In July 2004, Zelenskyy and Kiyashko were blessed with a daughter named Oleksandra. Their son, Kyrylo, was born in January 2013. In Zelenskyy’s 2014 movie 8 New Dates, their daughter played Sasha, the daughter of the protagonist. In addition, she participated in the show The Comedy Comet Company Comedy’s Kids and won 50,000 hryvnias in 2016. 

How much is Volodymyr Zelenskyy Net Worth?

Volodymyr Zelensky is a politician, former actor, and comedian who has been serving as the president of Ukraine since 2019. As of 2022, the net worth of Volodymyr Zelensky is estimated to have $96 Million. His assets were worth about 37 million hryvnias (about $1.5 million USD) in 2018. His monthly salary is $1 Million at present which makes his annual salary of around $12 Million. His source of wealth is from government work. He is living a lavish lifestyle at present. He has purchased a brand-new Mercedes-Benz G-Class at a price of $370,000 USD. He also owns a Tesla Model S which is worth more than $100,000 USD. A few other cars owned by Zelenskyy are Jaguar XF $125,000 USD, Audi Q2 $80,000 USD, BMW X9 $150,000 USD. 

How tall is Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a handsome and cool man with a height of five feet ten inches and his balanced bodyweight consist of 70 Kg. His other body measurement is still to get unfolded yet. His body type is average. His hair color is light brown and his eye color is brown. He has got a healthy body and he frequently does exercise to keep himself fit and fine.