Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

This Comedy Star Wants to Be Ukraine’s Donald Trump

Volodymyr Zelensky has launched a clever populist campaign in a presidential race that’s wide open.

January 10, 2019 at 12:47 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

President Poroshenko gestures during a mass prayer for Ukraine.
Photographer: Mykola Lazarenko/TASS/Getty Images

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If any country has good reason to be disappointed with its elite, it’s Ukraine. That’s why the anti-elite candidate, comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who has launched a populist campaign with Donald Trump-like flair, shouldn’t be written off in March’s presidential election.

Despite President Petro Poroshenko’s formidable effort to secure a second term on a nationalist platform of support for the Ukrainian language, the military, and a church independent from Moscow, the race is wide open.