Ukraine’s runoff election is likely to pit a comedian who plays the president on TV against the country’s actual president – and the comedian is the favourite to win.
With more than 67% of Sunday’s first-round results counted, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has taken a commanding lead, with 30.45% of the vote, ahead of Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent, who is on 16.22%.
Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, has 13.12% and appears unlikely to catch Poroshenko to secure a place in the runoff.
Zelenskiy’s dark horse candidacy has been the big surprise of this year’s elections. The 41-year-old has no political experience and has largely relied on a wave of anger with Poroshenko and government corruption to carry him to victory. On his television show, Servant of the People, he plays a high-school teacher who becomes president after his rant against corruption goes viral online.
Polling shows that Ukrainians are fed up after years of stalling reforms, rising costs, and a war against Russia-backed separatists in the country’s south-east. They also want new faces – both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko have been in politics for years.
“This is only the first step toward a great victory,” Zelenskiy said after seeing the exit poll findings on Monday evening, which showed him with more than 30% of the vote.
Zelenskiy has been vague about his policies if elected president. He has said broadly that he would support Ukraine’s integration with the west and would seek peace in the south-east through talks with Russia, a sentiment that is broadly popular but may not be realistic.
But he has avoided debates and held few interviews with journalists.
In brief remarks to the press on Sunday evening, he said he was ready to debate with Poroshenko during the next round and would soon announce a core team of five advisers. Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former finance minister who supports Zelenskiy, said he would also release a plan for his first 100 days in office.
As the results came in, both Poroshenko and Zelenskiy launched opening salvos in what will likely be a bitterly fought second round.
“Fate has pitted me against Kolomoisky’s puppet,” declared Poroshenko in a reference to Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch who has business dealings with Zelenskiy.
“I am going to destroy him,” Mikhail Fyodorov, Zelenskiy’s head of digital strategy, said of Poroshenko. The attacks would be “much harsher” in the second round, he said.
Poroshenko showed contrition after the election results were delivered, trying to appease voters who believe his administration has grown out of touch.
“I critically and soberly understand the signal that society gave today to the acting authorities,” he said. “It’s a tough lesson for me and my team. It’s a reason for serious work to correct mistakes made over the past years.”
The highly contested vote had been held amid concerns about tampering. Police said they had received more than 2,100 complaints of violations on polling day alone in addition to hundreds of earlier voting fraud claims, including bribery attempts and removing ballots from polling stations.
But there were encouraging notes in Sunday’s elections, including a broad rejection of far-right candidates and the rise of an outsider candidate in Zelenskiy, whose Jewish heritage has remained an afterthought during the campaign.
In the second round, greater attention will likely be placed on a corruption scandal involving military embezzlement linked to Poroshenko, as well as reports about Zelenskiy’s business dealings with Kolomoisky.
