Volodymyr Zelensky was born in 1978 in Kryvyï Rih, a major steel and mining center in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east-central region. Raised as an atheist, as he should have been at the time, the Ukrainian president was first and foremost a Soviet boy. When he was 13, the USSR collapsed. His largely unpoliticized adolescence followed the hopes and chaos of an independent Ukraine, where crime and poverty flourished, while the future oligarchs appropriated a share of the country’s resources. In building courtyards, on improvised stages, his little troupe of friends, boys and girls, try their hand at stand-up comedy and song. The undisputed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky studies law to reassure his father, but puts most of his hyperactivity into writing and putting on shows.

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