John Leake on how Zelensky rose to power

I suspect that many of his fans have no idea how he rose to prominence in European affairs. Few probably know that Zelensky was the protege of the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi. 

Wikipedia describes his rise to power: 

In 2019 Kolomoyskyi owned 70% of the 1+1 Media Group whose TV channel 1+1 aired Servant of the People, a comedy series in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy plays a school teacher who, defying all expectations (including his own), becomes president of Ukraine on an anti-corruption platform. In March 2018, members of Zelenskyy’s production company Kvartal 95 registered a new political party called “Servant of the People.” Twelve months later, they succeeded in getting their candidate past Yulia Tymoshenko in the first round of the presidential election, and on 21 April 2019 to defeat President Poroshenko in the second round with 73 per cent of the vote. 

In an unexpected twist to this story, both the United States and Ukrainian governments turned on Kolomoyskyi in 2020, indicting him for multiple crimes in both countries. As with all things and people in Ukrainian politics—which has long been dominated by rival oligarchs worth billions in a country whose annual household median income is about $1000 U.S.—the reality of Kolomoyskyi’s affairs would probably be extremely difficult to elucidate. That fact that the Biden and Zelensky regimes turned on him doesn’t necessary mean he is guilty as charged. More likely, he’s no better and no worse than the rest of Ukraine’s shady oligarchs, including Victor Pinchuk, who was the single largest donor to the Clinton Foundation. 

I mention Zelensky’s career because it reminds me of the movie the The Wizard of Oz and The Matrix about the difficulty of distinguishing reality from an elaborate and convincing simulacrum. 

~ John Leake, "Europe Loses Its Mind for Zelensky," LewRockwell.com, March 5, 2025