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Sign up todayZelensky - Abridged
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Learn moreA vivid, up-to-date biography of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, covering his humble background and successful TV career to his corruption-dogged first years in office to Russia's invasion.
Told with flair and authority, it is the gripping story of one of the most admired and inspirational leaders in the world.
An action-packed biography of Ukraine's comedian-turned-President
Volodymyr Zelensky's life to date has been packed with drama and action.
By the age of 20, the Jewish boy from the provincial town of Kryvyi Rih had become a star of the stage.
At 30, he headed a multimillion-dollar TV company.
At 40, he took on Ukraine's corrupt political and business elite in a TV drama, playing a history teacher who becomes President.
Then he launched a real-life political party named after the TV show, won a landslide victory and became Ukraine's real President.
When Russian troops flooded across the border, Zelensky refused Western offers to leave Kyiv. He has marshalled Ukraine's resistance and successfully obtained Western missile systems and anti-tank weapons. Zelensky said: 'If I am elected, they will first sling mud at me. Then they will learn to respect me. And finally cry when I leave.'
Zelensky is written by a long-standing Russia and Ukraine reporter and a Russian- and Ukrainian speaking researcher. It's a pithy biography of Zelensky for anyone who wants to understand Ukraine's charismatic head of state, his complex country, and its vexed relationship with Russia.
Covering Zelensky's life from his childhood to the Ukrainian presidency, Zelensky deals with his background in a Russian-speaking region of Ukraine, his early career in TV taking part in KVN talent competitions, and his rise through the Ukrainian and Russian television industry.
Then it deals with Zelensky's breakthrough moment in the TV series Servant of the People playing a teacher who dreams of reforming Ukraine and ending its corruption. The show becomes a reality and Zelensky's party, Servant of the People, takes power.
Zelensky's presidency is marred by his attempts to curry favour with the US President Donald Trump and the offshoring of millions of dollars.
Nonetheless, Zelensky battles political rivals and takes on powerful vested interests in Europe's second-largest country. Then with his doggedness, speeches and strategy, he marshals Ukraine's staunch resistance to a superpower – a fight that most analysts assume Russia will quickly win. But they do not - and Ukraine starts to turn the tide of the war.
Zelensky and his country become symbols of defiance against Vladimir Putin's aggression. Zelensky: A Biography of Ukraine's War Leader is both an uplifting story and an urgent message from Ukraine.
Extract
In April 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected as the sixth President of Ukraine, with nearly three-quarters of the vote.
One month later, the Russian President attended the World Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. It had been five years since Russia's annexation of Crimea but daily skirmishes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists were still commonplace in eastern Ukraine.
'Why did you not congratulate Volodymyr Zelenksy when he became President?' asked the interviewer.
Putin breathed a heavy sigh. The Russian officials and business magnates in the room playfully nudged one another: this was going to be good...
Putin gave the enormous hall an almost pitying look and waited until the sniggering had died down... 'Listen, I do not know this man. I hope that we can meet one day. As far as I can tell, he's amazing at what he does, he's a marvellous actor.'
Putin continued: 'But seriously: it's one thing to play a person, but quite another thing to be that person.'
Laughter and generous applause filled the room.
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STEVEN DERIX is a journalist at the prestigious Dutch newspaper nrc Handelsblad. Together with Dolf de Groot he wrote Blood Brothers: The Downfall of Team Rabobank, which uncovered Michael Boogerd's doping fraud. From 2014 to 2020 he was nrc correspondent for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. MARINA SHELKUNOVA studied journalism and was a researcher and coordinator for NRC Handelsblad and De Standaard. AUTHOR NOTES This book draws from many hundreds of sources – books, newspaper articles, original press releases from media agencies, and interviews, in Ukrainian, Russian, and other languages. Before Zelensky became President, he was already a superstar; countless hours of online video footage are available on his life and work. The authors of this book invested a great deal of time in viewing this sometimes unedited source material. In several instances, the authors have borrowed from Steven Derix's work as NRC media correspondent in Moscow and Ukraine. Many gems were unearthed by searching through archived webpages, such as the Kvartal 95 fan sites from the 1990s. Volodymyr Zelensky and his colleagues from Kryvyi Rih are Russian-speaking; the President did not become fluent in Ukrainian until later in life. Nevertheless, this book uses Ukrainian forms of the names for Ukrainian places and people wherever possible. In doing so, the authors have gone a step further than the general practice of using Ukrainian except where a different (e.g. Russian) spelling has become standard, such as for 'Kiev' and 'Charkov.' In a time when Ukrainian independence is under constant threat of largescale military violence, such alternative designations seemed inappropriate. For this reason, the authors decided on 'Kyiv' and 'Kharkiv,' as is becoming more customary throughout the English-speaking world. The Ukrainian and Russian languages are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. While both a scientific and official transliteration exist, media in the English-speaking world use a plethora of different spellings. The authors of this book have tried to maintain a certain rigor in their spelling, but in some cases decided that common use is more important. Former heavy-weight Vitali Klitschko, who was based in Germany during his career, appears not as Klichko, but with his 'German' name. For the same reason, we spell the name of the incumbent president of Ukraine as 'Zelensky' and not 'Zelenskyi' or 'Zelenskyy'. The spelling 'Zelenskiy' reflects his name in Russian. Although Zelensky is Russian-speaking and learned Ukrainian only later in life, the authors felt it inappropriate to use this spelling. When transliterating the Cyrillic script into legible English, the authors made grateful use of the excellent online engine transcriptor.nl, an initiative by Radboud University Nijmegen, the Dutch Language Union and the Institute for the Dutch Language. This biography is not an academic publication, and therefore does not have footnotes or references. However, we have provided an extensive bibliography and list of sources. Steven Derix and Marina Shelkunova
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