Ukraine election: Comedian Zelensky wins presidency by landslide
Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky has won a landslide victory in the country's presidential election, exit polls suggest.
The polls give the political newcomer, who dominated the first round of voting three weeks ago, more than 70% support.
Mr Zelensky, 41, challenged incumbent president Petro Poroshenko who has admitted defeat. The apparent result is being seen as a huge blow to Mr Poroshenko and a rejection of Ukraine's establishment.
"I will never let you down," Mr Zelensky told celebrating supporters on Sunday. "I'm not yet officially the president," he added. "But as a citizen of Ukraine I can say to all countries in the post-Soviet Union: Look at us. Anything is possible!"
See also: Ukrainian Presidential Debate Sparks Envy Among Russians And Belarusians – OpEd
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @11:14AM (26 children)
Hope he will be able to make things better for you. I have my doubts though and it's not that i think that Zelensky would be bad at it, although i do not know a lot about him and his abilities and affiliations. Keep on keeping and fight the ruskies! They will do everything to destapilize your country.
This was a message from a friendly country of white and blue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @12:44PM (7 children)
He had a lot of practice being the ukranian president in a sitcom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @02:15PM (6 children)
Is Alec Baldwin running for President?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @03:18PM
I'm not sure everyone would be happy with that. He appears a lot on Russia Today and I've learned that that is bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)
god dammit Arec Bardwin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @04:30PM
Are you ronery?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 22 2019, @05:02PM (2 children)
No, but we did get that guy from that show, where he fired people. The show was forgettable, kind of hard to forget about him now, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 22 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)
Ah, we had prior precedent, though, as Reagan was an Actor.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Monday April 22 2019, @07:34PM
Actor? I thought he was Nancy's ventriloquism dummy...
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @01:29PM (16 children)
It's unlikely he can make things any worse for Ukrainians, than the past couple administrations have. A joke government has to be better than a fascist neonazi government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @02:33PM (14 children)
But the past government was set up by the US. Will the new president continue the old policies, or will they return to their natural allies Russia?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)
New President was put in by the guy who runs the network his TV show airs on. He's a dual citizen of Ukraine and Israel. Take a guess.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday April 22 2019, @05:14PM
His way around this conundrum is to hold triple citizenship - just add Cyprus to your list.
Maybe the Cyprus link is what helps him run an EU committee (unelected, as far as I know - he basically appointed himself)?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @09:33AM
I started wondering that myself. When was the last time we heard about a country, any country, having self-determination that wasn't controlled by moneyed interests within or without the country. It has been a lot time for anywhere large enough to qualify as either third or first world, and I gather most island or flyover nations either.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 22 2019, @03:32PM (5 children)
Articles I read have suggested it's unlikely that Zelensky will pivot to Russia. But only time will tell and his positions aren't very defined.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday April 22 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
Checking BBC maps, the predominantly Russian areas voted for him the most. The only district where Poroshenko won is the extreme western part around Lviv populated mostly by Eastern European Nations.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 22 2019, @07:33PM
It seems that he got 73% of the vote. Against an incumbent. And what "Russians in Ukraine" want might not match up with what the Kremlin wants.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @10:34PM (2 children)
wswswswsws agrees. (Wasn't sure if they're in your rotation.) Landslide victory for Zelensky over Poroshenko in Ukrainian presidential election [wsws.org]:
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Tuesday April 23 2019, @01:49PM (1 child)
Uh, just in case anyone missed what's hiding behind the abbreviation "wsws" that that quote is from, it's the World Socialist Web Site, the mouthpiece of the International Committee of the Fourth International. It carries a... novel interpretation of world events.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:44PM
Will add with abbr (e.g. wswswswsws, paper of record of the ICFI). fwiw, their interpretation is certainly novel, one should be aware that when ever they write "working class protests blablabla" or "working class outraged by blablabla" what they mean is that their autoworker's steering committee somewhere in Detroit (where wswswsws is headquartered) representing about 50 people passed a motion. otoh, their cynicism usually ends up being vindicated it seems.
But it's more likely that capitalism collapses to feudalism (probably a few times over about 5k years, maybe 10k) before it advances to socialism. If humans require more evolution to get away from the sociopath megalomaniac leader with sheeple pattern it could be more on the scale of about 100k to 1m years, which seems like a safe minimum for evolutionary changes. What will probably happen is that humans just regress back to great apes. Another possibility is suggested by Erikson in his Malazan series that maybe a species capable of complex social pattern such as civilizations will eventually just give up the civilization idea entirely over 100k to 1m years and turn into solitary nomads. Maybe for humans, seems they're more happy living in small farming villages of somewhere around 300 people max, so maybe they'll simply give up on ideas like empires and city-states on the scale of 100k years. (Of course, it's tempting to envision these dispersed farming villages as being steampunk/clockpunk.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @05:04PM (4 children)
Natural allie? Are you a complete rusky troll or just stupid? Russia fucking took their land and caused a war. No one else has taken their land or fought against them. Russia is anything but an allie.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @06:02PM (3 children)
Your are acting like a tool for the man. Ask the Ukranians and let them decide. You have no say, so bugger out.
A good place to start is to look at what caused the internal division in Ukraine. It all happened (this time) in the middle of a betting war between EU and the Russian Federation for Ukranian membership. The turmoil left room for fascist factions to get control of parts of Ukraine and they still occupy those areas. The new comedian overlord has promised to keep trying to get back the land from the fascist occupation. Russia took advantage of the situation and when the Crimean population voted to join the Russian Federation, Russia accepted. That might not have been fair game, but far from the shitty propaganda you are a posterboy for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @07:26PM
Troll? I could have called the facists 'nationalists', but truth is it's a bunch of skinheads with swastika tattoos. What I wrote was an accurate and chronological description of events spiced up with funny comedian guy stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
Russia orcestrated the so called vote and did not just accept the results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @08:57PM
Thank you so much for the links to the definite proof of that statement. I'm now sure it's not just something you feel is what must have happened because Russia is clearly always the force of evil in everything they do. I now realise that all of the voters was forced to vote as they did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:15AM
FTFY
(Score: 2) by jb on Tuesday April 23 2019, @06:06AM
Frankly, I think the Ukraine has bigger problems than running out of staples...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @11:15AM (3 children)
Ukrania has a comedian in charge. USA has a clown in charge.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @03:01PM (1 child)
honk honk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @04:35PM
A clown car with nonstop clowns.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @09:39AM
America's last great comedian was George Carlin and they can't exhume him to run as president because of the power outages when the country finds out the flywheel they attached to his corpse is the only thing keeping the power grid running :)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @11:19AM (1 child)
or allow Ukraine to become another France
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @01:49PM
Too busy legalizing cannabis and prostitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @12:15PM
Wrestler for governor, moviestar for governor , anchorman,... long list really
(Score: 2) by Megahard on Monday April 22 2019, @03:18PM (1 child)
His first act was to rickroll his supporters.
(Score: 4, Funny) by richtopia on Monday April 22 2019, @03:33PM
Admittedly, I would want a President who will:
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Okay: "say goodbye" might be appreciated; otherwise we are moving into dictator territory.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by richtopia on Monday April 22 2019, @03:29PM (3 children)
I'm typically anti-establishment, so a comedian president seems like a mix-up of an institutionalized system. Given the large margin of victory, I suspect the Ukranian people have similar emotions.
Now, almost any other country I would be very cheerful for this outcome. But the Ukraine has an on-going armed conflict and territory occupied by another nation, not to mention a difficult economic position. If you were loading a scenario in "Presidential Ruler Simulator 2019" this would be somewhere around the harder difficulty setting.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @04:38PM (2 children)
Comedians are typically not dumb, so there is hope.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 23 2019, @01:53PM (1 child)
They're also not experienced politicians, which is what's needed to handle the Ukraine's made-in-Moscow war. In peacetime a popular, close-to-the-people leader is a fine thing, but in a crisis and having to make tough decisions it may not be the best choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:08AM
it depends on his intentions.
my impression is that capable actors/comedians should make capable judges of character (since they are bullshitters themselves), therefore they CAN surround themselves with honest and capable counsel --- but this ability of theirs does not mean they are willing or capable of leading the country out of trouble (he could be a coward who's afraid to select advisors properly, or he could be an opportunist who just wants to steal everything that he can).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @06:30PM (1 child)
Jokers seem to be "in" thing these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @07:46PM
Why so serious?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:28AM
No wonder Putin doesn't like the results. The expected cuddling of Nazis by the previous presidents against the Russian East played well into Putin's hands. But this guy wants to heal the divide. The West (non-Russian friendly) voted for him. The East (Russian-friendly) voted for him. Putin can't say "poor oppressed Russian minority" anymore.
Now it's up to Zelensky to just end this pointless war.