Zelensky: Ukraine's President and His Country

Action-packed biography of Ukraine's leader

Millions who have admired Volodymyr Zelensky's defiance during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will learn much from this up-to-date biography of the Ukrainian President. 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 where he played 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.

He 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.’

Covering Zelensky’s background and bustling TV career through to his first, controversial years in office to Russia’s full-scale blitzkrieg, Zelenskyis written by a long-standing Russia and Ukraine reporter and a Russian- and Ukrainian speaking researcher.