Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Can’t Afford to Fail His Oligarch Test
A settlement with a billionaire business partner could send the young president down a slippery slope.
No more joking around.
Photographer: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, may be more popular in his country than Vladimir Putin is in Russia, but he’s facing his first crisis since taking office in May, and it could undermine his approval, at home and abroad. The trouble has to do with Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire and the owner of the channel that distributed Zelenskiy's TV shows when the president was a comedian.
Kolomoisky's hopes of a major comeback under Zelenskiy are increasingly apparent. Such a comeback would mean a premature and inglorious end to Zelenskiy’s promises of a new beginning for Ukraine, one of Europe’s most corrupt countries.