Newspaper: Zelensky The World's Most Influential Jew

Newspaper: Zelensky The World's Most Influential Jew 

The Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post published its annual list of the "most influential Jews in the world", topped by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

According to the newspaper :

This year the Ukrainian President gained a rare place for a global icon against the backdrop of the situation in Ukraine.. Zelensky is one of the most powerful people in the world today, not just the most influential Jew in the world ".

The authors of the list had placed Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid second

and French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, whose parents survived the Holocaust.

According to the newspaper :

among the 10 most influential Jews on the planet was American Ambassador to Israel Tom Naidis in fourth place, former Israeli Prime Minister and current opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu in fifth place, and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in eighth place.

The list contains 50 names :

including politicians, public figures, scientists, businessmen and cultural figures of Jewish descent living in Israel and abroad. The Jerusalem Post published the list in conjunction with the New Year 5783 according to the Jewish calendar, which is celebrated this year from the evening of September 25.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, also spelled Volodymyr Zelenskiy 

(born January 25, 1978, Krivi Reh, Ukraine, USSR [now Ukraine])

• a comedian and actor from Ukraine who won the 2019 presidential election.

• Although he was a political novice

• Zelenskiy was an anti-Zelenskiy-corruption platform that received widespread support

and his online followers translated into a solid electoral base. 

He won a landslide victory over current President Petro Poroshenko in the second round of the 2019 presidential election.

 President Zelensky's leadership during Russia's invasion of Ukraine earned him global fame.

His early life and career as an entertainment artist

Zelensky was born to Jewish parents in the industrial city of Crevy Reh in southern Ukraine. As a young child, his family moved to Erdenet, Mongolia, for four years before returning to Kryvyy Rih, where Zelensky attended school.

Like many people from the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, he grew up as a Russian speaker, but also gained fluency in Ukrainian and English. In 1995 he attended the Krivi Rih Economic Institute, the local campus of the National Economic University of Kiev, and in 2000 he graduated with a degree in law.

People's Servant and Way to the Presidency

In 2013, Zelensky returned to Kvartal 95 as artistic director, but his entertainment career will soon intersect with seismic events that shook Ukraine's political landscape. In February 2014 the Ukrainian President's Government. 

Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after months of popular protests, and billionaire Petro Poroshenko was elected president of Ukraine.

With Russia-backed insurgency erupting in eastern Ukraine and widespread corruption undermining public confidence in the government

Poroshenko struggled to enact even modest reforms.

It was against this background that the People's Server Zelensky was first shown on 1 + 1 in October 2015. Zelensky was cast as Vasiliy Goloborodko, a history teacher for everyone who became a viral phenomenon online after a student filmed him delivering an impassioned and profanity-filled speech against official corruption.

The show was a huge success, and Goloborodko's unexpected path to Ukraine's presidency will provide something of a road map for Zelensky. 

In anticipation of that move, in 2018 Kvartal 95 officially registered the People's Servant as a political party in Ukraine.

Zelensky took action to put Kolomoisky out of his mind.

It is a task that has been streamlined by his campaign's unconventional strategy. Avoid detailed political statements and press conferences in favour of short speeches or comedy routines posted on YouTube and Instagram.

On 31 March 2019, Zelensky won more than 30 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, and Poroshenko narrowly finished second with 16 percent.

Zelenskiy refused to discuss Poroshenko until two days before the start of the second round of polling

• and this meeting contained all manifestations of the sporting event.

• On April 19, 2019, tens of thousands gathered at the Kiev 

• Olympic Stadium to witness the confrontation

• although Poroshenko tried to portray Zelensky as a political novice lacking

• stability to confront the Russian president. Vladimir Putin

• failed to deliver any major blows against his opponent.

A second debate was scheduled for later in the evening, but Zelensky did not attend, noting that "there were enough debates for a day."

Presidency of Ukraine

On April 21, Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine with 73 percent of the vote.

Within days, the president-elect faced the first foreign policy challenge when Putin announced his decision to grant Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens in separatist-held areas of war-torn eastern Ukraine.

Russia-backed hybrid war there was entering its fifth year

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been displaced by the conflict. In response to a Facebook post that would grant Ukrainian citizenship to Russians and others "suffering from dictatorial or corrupt regimes," Zelensky made fun of the proposal.

Early challenges and early elections

On 20 May 2019, Zelensky was sworn in as president. He used his inaugural speech, delivered with a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, to call for national unity and announce the dissolution of Parliament (Supreme Council).

This step was politically necessary :

• His presidential victory did not give a legislative mandate, as the People's Servant did not hold any parliamentary seats.

• Early elections were held on July 21

• Zelensky himself described the contest as "probably more important than the presidential election."

The People's Servant won an absolute majority :

securing 254 of the 450 seats (26 seats, representing Crimea - an autonomous Ukrainian republic illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 - and the war zone in the east was not disputed).

The result was the first time in Ukraine's post-Soviet history that one party could absolutely control the legislative agenda.

While Zelensky was building his new administration

Relations with his former business partner have become scrutinized again.

• Kolomoisky's media empire provided a valuable platform for Zelensky during the presidential election campaign

• However, Zelensky pledged not to grant his office any special privileges.

• Kolomoisky himself returned to Ukraine a few days before Zelensky's inauguration.

The billionaire stated that he would not act as a "grey cardinal" guiding behind-the-scenes politics.

COVID-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine

As has been the case in several nations worldwide

• Daily life in Ukraine has been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic SARS-CoV-2.

• Zelensky has formulated a national mitigation strategy designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19
• 
  

• the possibly fatal illness brought on by the virus

But some local politicians have resisted guidance from Kiev.

Mayors in many of Ukraine's largest cities, who felt empowered by 2014 government reforms that moved significant autonomy to the local level, clashed with Zelensky over proposed business closures and closures.

The tug of war between Zelensky and the mayors will have a significant impact on the local elections in October 2020.

Regional parties dominated the mayors' races while national parties, including Zelensky's Servant of the People, struggled.

The poor electoral performance also reflected a general decline in Zelensky's overall acceptance.

 The populist that his reform programme was stalled, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine remained unstable.

While Zelensky was able to launch his political agenda with the passage of a law aimed at curbing the oligarchs' influence, the Russian-backed insurgency in the Donbass quickly turned into the greatest threat to European stability since World War II.