The Times Magazine 25Kyrylo followed nine years later. Over the
next decade Zelensky had roles on screen
and off – including a winning season on the
Ukrainian version of Strictly Come Dancing.
In 2015, he landed the role that would change
his life.
A year earlier, in 2014, popular protests had
toppled the Russian-backed president Viktor
Yanukovych, and billionaire Petro Poroshenko
was elected to replace him. Against a backdrop
of endemic corruption, a weak economy,
Putin’s annexation of Crimea and a Russian-
backed insurgency in the east, Zelensky’s new
sitcom, Servant of the People, hit the screens.
Zelensky played a schoolteacher who becomes
president after a student-filmed rant about
corruption becomes a viral sensation.
Then in 2019, he ran for president. After
fending off claims he was a frontman for the
media mogul who had broadcast his sitcom,
he won a convincing victory, promptly
dissolved parliament and called a snap
election. His newly formed political party,
also called Servant of the People, won the
first absolute majority in Ukraine’s short
history as a democracy.
It was a rocket ship to success, but trouble
soon set in. US president Donald Trump
tried to blackmail Zelensky by withholding
$400 million (£327 million) in military aid in
exchange for dirt on Joe Biden’s son, who had
business dealings in Ukraine. Putin ramped
up the pressure by offering Russian passports
to the population of the occupied eastern
territories. Zelensky’s promised crackdown
on corruption proved difficult for a man
without a history of governing, while
economic growth was slow. By late 2021, the
celebrity president’s popularity had plunged.
Zelensky’s promise to clean up Ukraine’s
notoriously corrupt political system drew on
deep personal history. Zelensky’s grandfather
and three great-uncles fought in the Soviet
army against the Nazis, with only his
grandfather surviving – Semyon, a colonelin the Red Army’s 57th Guards Motor Rifle
Division. Upon his return, Semyon was
tasked by the city council with smashing
the town’s notorious crime syndicates. His
non-negotiable approach made him a local
legend. As head of the Kryvyi Rih police
force, nobody got any favours from Semyon
Zelensky – not even his wife. On one occasion
Semyon’s brother-in-law, a courier, had lost
some bread on his delivery route and stood
accused of theft by his employer. When she
turned up at her husband’s office to plead her
brother’s case, Mrs Zelensky was promised
nothing more than a “fair investigation” and
the same as any other citizen. Although
Semyon’s brother-in-law was cleared, they
never spoke again.
“I would have protected my relative.
Semyon didn’t,” says Dr Oleksandr Kryzhov,
whose uncle Petro Verchuk was in the room
where it happened. “And that is the greatness
of the Zelensky family name.”
According to Kryzhov, the Zelensky
family’s dentist and lifelong friend, the
future president’s character was formed
as a youngster living with his grandparents,
whom he loved deeply. When his grandmother
needed medical attention and could no longer
walk, he “literally carried her in his arms to
the dentist chair”, recalls Kryzhov.
Shortly after his swearing in as president,
Zelensky returned to Kryvyi Rih incognito
and visited Semyon’s grave. At the cemetery,
he got on his knees and spoke secretly to
his mentor.“I think he was swearing to be just like
Semyon,” says Kryzhov.
Despite having a son who is now the
president, Oleksandr and Rymma Zelensky
have sought no special treatment before or
during the war. “They haven’t changed their
lives,” says Marynyuk, who was taught by
Oleksandr at university.
The Russian invasion came quickly
to the city. Home to Ukraine’s industrial
heartland, Kryvyi Rih sits on a key junction
between Kherson and Odesa in the south,
Dnipro in the east, and the highway running
north to Kyiv. On the second day of the war,
the Russians tried to land a Il-76 transport
plane at the city’s former Soviet-era air base.
It is likely that the transport was carrying
more than 100 paratroopers with orders to
capture the airfield as an “air bridge”. From
there, Putin’s invading force could fly in
troops and equipment for attacks on nearby
cities. But the people of Kryvyi Rih were
having none of it.
“The Russians got as low as 300 metres
before they had to pull up,” explains
Oleksandr Vilkul, leader of Kryvyi Rih’s
military defence. The city’s defenders
had already scattered enough mechanical
equipment around the runway to make
landing impossible.
With Russian divisions only kilometres
away from the city, further fighting is
expected. But Kryvyi Rih’s awkward
geography and strange shape make conquest
difficult. In the Second World War, the city
held out against the Nazis for six months. It
took the Soviets just as long to win it back.
Having resisted three attacks so far, Vilkul
has vowed to defend the president’s home
town to the last. “We will be fighting and
dying for Ukraine,” he says.
Strategists suggest capturing Zelensky’s
home town, as well as being a strategic victory,
would be a huge blow to the Ukrainian spirit.
Just as Hitler thought Stalingrad would beTHE TRAM GOES DIRECTLY
TO THE STEELWORKS. ‘THIS
IS AN INDUSTRIAL TOWN
FOR HARD PEOPLE’
Mine workers shelter in a bunker earlier this month Mural honouring Kryvyi Rih’s football team, FC KryvbasDAVID GUTTENFELDER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE, MISHA ZELINSKY