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April 22, 2019

Volodymyr Zelensky, Who Played a President on TV, Elected to Lead Ukraine
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In Ukraine, a political novice who played a president on TV won a
landslide national election Sunday over incumbent President Petro
Poroshenko. Forty-one-year-old comedian Volodymyr Zelensky leveraged his
celebrity in a campaign that saw him promise to root out corruption and
to end the war against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The
U.N. says the conflict has killed 13,000 people, a quarter of them
civilians, since fighting broke out in 2014. In his hit show, "Servant
of the People," Zelensky portrays a president who resigns after facing
down the International Monetary Fund. But as a candidate, Zelensky
promised to cooperate with the IMF as it doles out multibillion-dollar
loans to Ukraine in exchange for unpopular austerity programs.


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