Volodymyr Zelensky

Early challenges and snap election

On May 20, 2019, Zelensky was sworn in as president. He used his inaugural address, which he delivered in a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, to call for national unity and to announce the dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council). This move was politically necessary: His presidential victory did not confer a legislative mandate, as Servant of the People did not occupy any parliamentary seats. Snap elections were held on July 21, and Zelensky himself characterized the contest as “maybe more important than the presidential election.” Servant of the People won an absolute majority, capturing 254 of 450 seats (26 seats, representing Crimea—a Ukrainian autonomous republic that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014—and the war zone in the east, were not contested). The result marked the first time in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history that a single party could command absolute control over the legislative agenda.

While Zelensky worked to build his new administration, ties to his former business partner again became the subject of scrutiny. Kolomoisky’s media empire had provided a valuable platform for Zelensky during the presidential campaign, but Zelensky vowed that no special favors would be granted by his office. Kolomoisky himself had returned to Ukraine just days before Zelensky’s inauguration; the billionaire stated that he would not act as a “grey cardinal,” directing policy from behind the scenes.

Zelensky and U.S. Pres. Donald Trump

In September 2019 Zelensky found his administration thrust into the center of a political scandal in the United States when a whistleblower in the American intelligence community lodged a formal complaint about the actions of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. The matter concerned Trump’s alleged withholding of a significant military aid package to Ukraine unless Ukraine initiated an investigation of alleged wrongdoing by former U.S. vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Hunter Biden had served on the board of Ukrainian energy conglomerate Burisma Holdings, and Trump claimed, without evidence, that the elder Biden had used his office to benefit his son.

In April 2019 Biden had announced that he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge Trump in 2020, and Biden quickly became the party’s front-runner. Contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, began in earnest soon afterward, and they predated Zelensky’s inauguration. These discussions initially focused on claims involving the 2016 U.S. presidential election and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, but they soon expanded to include Biden. Zelensky’s transition team declined a request to meet with Giuliani over what they saw as a matter of internal U.S. politics, but Trump continued to pursue the allegations. In a phone call with Zelensky on July 25, 2019, Trump discussed an investigation of the Biden family. Although Trump admitted that he had ordered the aid package withheld in anticipation of that call, he claimed that no quid pro quo was offered or demanded.

Zelensky stated that he would look into the Burisma matter, and he sacked Lutsenko in August. At that time nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid remained in limbo, despite its bipartisan authorization by the U.S. Congress. Those funds were finally released on September 11, 2019, but, by that point, American lawmakers had begun to push for more information regarding Trump and the details of his July 25 call with Zelensky. That call and Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure Zelensky served as the basis for a U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry that was opened on September 24, 2019. Trump was convicted by the House but ultimately acquitted by the Senate, and he responded by purging those officials whom he considered disloyal. This meant the departure of some of the most experienced Russia and Ukraine experts from the U.S. national security staff.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

As was the case in many countries around the world, daily life in Ukraine was profoundly affected by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Zelensky crafted a national mitigation strategy that was designed to limit the spread of COVID-19, the potentially deadly disease caused by the virus, but some local politicians resisted direction from Kyiv. Mayors of several of Ukraine’s largest cities, feeling empowered by the 2014 government reforms that had devolved significant autonomy to the local level, clashed with Zelensky over proposed business closures and lockdown measures. The tug-of-war between Zelensky and the mayors would have a significant effect on local elections in October 2020. Regional parties dominated mayoral races while national parties, including Zelensky’s Servant of the People, struggled. The poor electoral performance also reflected an overall decline in Zelensky’s public approval. The populist reform platform that had swept him into office appeared to be stalled, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine remained unsettled. While Zelensky did manage to jump-start his political agenda with the passage of a law intended to curb the influence of oligarchs, the Russian-backed insurgency in the Donbas soon devolved into the largest threat to European stability since World War II.

In late 2021 Russia began a massive buildup of troops and matériel along its border with Ukraine. Additional Russian forces were sent to Belarus—ostensibly for joint exercises with that country’s military—and a sizable Russian naval flotilla was assembled in the Black Sea. Western intelligence agencies stated that the moves were a clear precursor to an invasion, but Putin denied any such intent. Western leaders carried on negotiations with both Putin and Zelensky in an effort to prevent the bloodshed that appeared inevitable, but Russia’s military preparations continued. On February 21, 2022, Putin announced that he would recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and dispatch “peacekeepers” to both regions. Western leaders responded by leveling a new round of sanctions, and, in the early morning hours of February 24, Zelensky delivered a televised plea for peace directly to the Russian people. Shortly thereafter, at about 6:00 am Moscow time, Putin announced the beginning of a “special military operation,” and Russian cruise missiles began to rain down on targets in Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine drew condemnation from leaders around the world. Russian troops and armored vehicles poured into Ukraine from Russia, Russian-occupied Crimea, and Belarus, and scores of military personnel and civilians were killed in the first day of fighting. As world leaders announced increasingly tough sanctions against Russia, Zelensky tried to rally support from abroad, warning that a “new Iron Curtain” was descending on Europe.

Zelensky became the face of Ukrainian resistance, and his entertainment background and media savvy provided Ukraine with a weapon for which Putin had no counter. In the information war, the winner was unquestionably Zelensky. After Russian propaganda organs attempted to promote the false claim that Zelensky had fled the capital, he took to the street and filmed himself defiantly standing in central Kyiv. When the United States offered to evacuate him from the combat zone, Zelensky reportedly said, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” Often clad in an olive drab T-shirt, he delivered video addresses to governments around the world, calling upon them to provide Ukraine with military aid and to limit Russia’s ability to wage an offensive war through whatever means possible. Zelensky’s efforts were largely successful; although NATO balked at enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine (such an act would have been tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia), Western countries flooded Ukraine with antitank weapons and surface-to-air missile systems. In addition, the sanctions regime that was leveled against Russia was among the most severe in history, and the Russian economy reeled as a result.

After the initial Russian offensive against Kyiv collapsed, Russian forces withdrew from the area and left scenes of carnage in their wake. In April Zelensky traveled to the liberated Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where Russian occupiers had massacred hundreds of civilians in a spasm of violence that the United Nations later characterized as a war crime. Throughout the spring and summer of 2022 Zelensky greeted a succession of Western leaders in Kyiv, European Commission Pres. Ursula von der Leyen making multiple trips. During one such visit von der Leyen personally delivered the documents that formalized Ukraine’s intent to join the European Union; Ukraine was granted EU candidate status on June 23.

Zelensky’s appeal for increased defense aid bore fruit when the United States dispatched High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine. HIMARS gave the Ukrainian military the ability to strike targets far behind the front lines with great precision, and the artillery system would be a critical element in Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive. Between August and November 2022 Ukrainian forces liberated a vast swath of territory, recapturing virtually all of the Kharkiv region and forcing the Russians out of Kherson. Zelensky regularly traveled to the combat zone, greeting residents of newly freed villages or bolstering the morale of troops in front line cities like Bakhmut. In December 2022 Zelensky was named Time’s Person of the Year in a decision that the magazine’s editor claimed was “the most clear-cut in memory.” Later that month Zelensky made his first foreign trip since the Russian invasion when he traveled to Washington, D.C., to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

As 2023 dawned, Russia continued to attack Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure while it mounted sanguinary assaults on Ukrainian positions in the Donbas. Zelensky shook up his cabinet by dismissing a raft of senior officials who were implicated in a financial scandal involving the procurement of wartime supplies. Tackling government corruption was a key condition for EU membership, and among those included in the broadening investigation was Kolomoisky, the oligarch who had played a key role in Zelensky’s rise to prominence. In February 2023 Zelensky made another trip abroad, with stops in London, Paris (where he was awarded the Legion of Honour by French Pres. Emmanuel Macron), and Brussels. In Brussels he told assembled EU leaders that, by continuing to support Ukraine, “We are all protecting Europe” from Russian aggression.

On February 20, 2023, just days ahead of the war’s first anniversary, U.S. Pres. Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, where he met with Zelensky and pledged additional security assistance to Ukraine. In May Ukrainian troops withdrew from the shattered city of Bakhmut; months of human wave attacks had finally overwhelmed the defenders, but the cost to the Russians had been astonishing. At least 100,000 Russians were killed or wounded in a 10-month assault on a city that had minimal strategic value.

The war took an unexpected turn in June 2023 when Yevgeny Prigozhin—whose Kremlin-backed Wagner Group mercenaries had borne the brunt of the fighting at Bakhmut—launched a short-lived uprising against the Russian defense ministry. Prigozhin occupied Russia’s Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, while Wagner operations chief Dmitry Utkin led an armored column of some 25,000 Wagner mercenaries toward Moscow. Although the Wagner force encountered minimal effective resistance, Prigozhin halted the advance just 120 miles (roughly 200 km) from Moscow and ordered the troops back to their positions in Ukraine. Belarusian Pres. Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal between Prigozhin and the Kremlin, but few were surprised when, two months later, a private plane carrying Utkin and Prigozhin crashed under mysterious circumstances. Zelensky stated that the entire situation had revealed Putin’s relative weakness, and in an address to the United Nations, he said, “Evil cannot be trusted. Ask Prigozhin.”

In December 2023, almost exactly 10 years after the start of the Maidan protest movement that brought down the Yanukovych government, the EU officially opened accession talks with Ukraine. The event was celebrated in Brussels and Kyiv, and Zelensky hailed the news as “a victory for all of Europe.”

Dismissal of Zaluzhny and delayed presidential election

On February 8, 2024, Zelensky dismissed Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, as part of a “reboot” of the war effort. Zaluzhny remained immensely popular within the military and the Ukrainian public, but disagreements between the two men over the direction of the war had become fodder for headlines in the Ukrainian press. The dismissal had the potential to split Ukraine’s political and military elite into opposing camps, but Zelensky and Zaluzhny acted quickly to present the move as an amicable one, and the two were pictured smiling and shaking hands in Zelensky’s office. For his part, Zaluzhny dismissed any talk of mounting a political challenge to Zelensky while the war was ongoing. In March Zaluzhny was named ambassador to the United Kingdom. It was undoubtedly a high-profile posting with a vital strategic ally, but the appointment also removed Zaluzhny from Kyiv at a time when his public approval numbers rivaled or even eclipsed those of Zelensky.

Zaluzhny’s replacement was Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, ground commander of the defense of Kyiv in the early days of the war and architect of the wildly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive in summer 2022. Syrsky also oversaw the defense of Bakhmut, and a little over a week after his appointment, Syrsky ordered the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Avdiivka. Russia’s Pyrrhic victory in that Donbas city proved to be nearly as costly as its earlier capture of Bakhmut, and minor gains achieved at the cost of enormous losses came to characterize the Russian war effort.

Presidential elections were scheduled to be held in spring 2024, and Zelensky’s five-year term was due to expire in May of that year. Ukrainian law barred the holding of elections while martial law was in effect, however, and an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supported the extension of Zelensky’s term until the end of the war. Even Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, arguably the most prominent likely candidates for the presidency, publicly declared that such a challenge should only be mounted once martial law had ended.

In September 2024 Zelensky carried out the first major reshuffle of his cabinet since the beginning of the war. Andrii Sybiha, who had served as ambassador to Turkey before becoming an adviser to Zelensky, was elevated to foreign minister. Olga Stefanishyna was tapped to head a joint office as deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration (a portfolio that oversaw Ukraine’s efforts toward membership in the European Union and NATO) as well as justice minister. Oleksiy Kuleba, who had worked in the president’s office, was appointed deputy prime minister for reconstruction.

Clash with Trump and the “Cardboard Revolution”

During the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, Trump had boasted dozens of times that, if elected, he would end the Russia-Ukraine War “before I even arrive at the Oval Office.” That did not happen, and shortly after his return to the White House, Trump took to social media in an effort to pressure Ukraine to end the war on his terms. Trump stated—falsely—that Ukraine had started the war, and he accused Zelensky of being a “Dictator without Elections” who held a “4 percent approval rating.” All of the claims reflected Kremlin talking points, which Zelensky addressed, saying that Trump “unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.”