Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine.

Zelenskyy announced his candidacy in the 2019 presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year's Eve address of then-president Petro Poroshenko on the TV channel 1+1.

During the first two years of his administration, Zelenskyy oversaw the lifting of legal immunity for members of parliament (the Verkhovna Rada),[7] the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic recession, and some limited progress in tackling corruption in Ukraine.

[11][12] During his presidential campaign, Zelenskyy promised to end Ukraine's protracted conflict with Russia, and he has attempted to engage in dialogue with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

[15] When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy remained in Kyiv, declining international offers to evacuate him from the capital under attack; he declared martial law across Ukraine and a general mobilisation of the armed forces.

[46] In the series, Zelenskyy's character was a high-school history teacher in his 30s who won the presidential election after a viral video showed him ranting against the government corruption in Ukraine.

[63] In October 2021, the Pandora Papers revealed that Zelenskyy, his chief aide, and the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov operated a network of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize.

[77] Zelenskyy styled himself as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption figure, and said he wished to restore trust in politicians, "to bring professional, decent people to power" and to "change the mood and timbre of the political establishment".

[101] Various foreign officials attended the ceremony in Ukraine's parliament (Verkhovna Rada), including Salome Zourabichvili (Georgia), Kersti Kaljulaid (Estonia), Raimonds Vējonis (Latvia), Dalia Grybauskaitė (Lithuania), János Áder (Hungary), Maroš Šefčovič (EU), and Rick Perry (United States).

[111] This initiative was completed on 3 September, when the new parliament passed a bill stripping lawmakers of legal immunity, delivering Zelenskyy a legislative victory by fulfilling one of his key campaign promises.

[115] In 2020, Zelenskyy's party proposed reforms to Ukraine's media laws with the intent to increase competition and loosen the dominance of Ukrainian oligarchs on television and radio broadcasters.

[120] In June 2021, Zelenskyy submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a bill creating a public registry of Ukraine's oligarchs, banning them from participating in privatizations of state-owned companies and forbidding them from contributing financially to politicians.

[127] A number of the members of the Presidential Administration Zelenskyy appointed were former colleagues from his former production company, Kvartal 95,[125] including Ivan Bakanov, who became deputy head of the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU).

[132] In the 21 July 2019 parliamentary election, Zelenskyy's political party, Servant of the People, won the first single-party majority in modern Ukrainian history in parliament, with 43 percent of the party-list vote.

[139] In his 4 March address to the Rada,[140] Zelenskyy recommitted to reforms domestic and financial, and remarked that he "cannot always become a psychologist for people, a crisis manager for someone, a collector who requires honestly earned money, and a nanny of the ministry in charge.

[146] In October 2019, Zelenskyy announced a preliminary deal struck with the separatists, under which the Ukrainian government would respect elections held in the region in exchange for Russia withdrawing its unmarked troops.

Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the far-right National Corps and first commander of Azov, accused Zelenskyy of being disrespectful to army veterans and of acting on behalf of the Kremlin by leaving Ukrainians vulnerable to Russian aggression.

[148] In December 2019, Russia and Ukraine agreed to resume talks mediated by France and Germany under the so-called Normandy Format, which had been abandoned in 2016; it was Zelenskyy's first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin.

[153] On 8 January 2020, the Presidential Office announced that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was cutting short his trip to Oman owing to the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 plane crash in nearby Iran the same day.

[154] Also on the same day, internet news site Obozrevatel.com released information that on 7 January 2020, Ukrainian politician of the Opposition Platform — For Life Medvedchuk – who has exclusive relations with the current president of Russia – may have arrived in Oman.

[157] On 14 January 2020, Yermak dismissed the rumors as speculations and baseless conspiracy theories,[158] while Medvedchuk stated that the plane was used by his older daughter's family to fly from Oman to Moscow.

[175] In April 2021, in response to Russian military build-up at the Ukrainian borders, Zelenskyy spoke to American president Joe Biden and urged NATO members to speed up Ukraine's request for membership.

[185][186] On 19 February, as worries of a Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, Zelenskyy warned the Munich Security Conference that Western nations should abandon their "appeasement" attitude toward Moscow.

[195] In the early hours of 26 February, during the most significant assault by Russian troops on the capital of Kyiv, the United States government and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged Zelenskyy to evacuate to a safer location, and both offered assistance for such an effort.

[202][203] Harvard Political Review said that Zelenskyy "has harnessed the power of social media to become history's first truly online wartime leader, bypassing traditional gatekeepers as he uses the internet to reach out to the people.

He has made numerous addresses to the legislatures of the EU,[223][224] UK,[225] Poland,[226] Australia,[227] Canada,[228] US,[229] Germany,[230] Israel,[231] Italy,[232] Japan,[233] the Netherlands,[234] Romania,[235] and the Nordic countries.

"[284][285][286] On 30 August 2024, Zelenskyy decommissioned Lt Gen Mykola Oleshchuk, who had headed the Ukrainian Air Force since 2021, shortly after the death of F-16 pilot Col Oleksiy Mes during a Russian missile attack.

[297] Zelenskyy's electoral programme claimed that Ukrainian NATO membership is "the choice of the Maidan and the course that is enshrined in the Constitution, in addition, it is an instrument for strengthening our defense capability.

[328] On 2 December 2022, Zelenskyy said his administration would enter a bill in the Verkhovna Rada that would ban "religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation", referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP), from operating in Ukraine.

[346] Ausichicrinites zelenskyyi, an extinct species of feather star described on 20 July 2022 by a group of Polish paleontologists, is named after Zelenskyy "for his courage and bravery in defending free Ukraine.