WAR TORN: Biogarphy of Vladimir Putin And Volodymyr Zelenskyy

There was a sense that Zelensky's quicksilver appeal and multiplatform expertise had helped give Ukraine a fighting chance against the Kremlin's vast army and misinformation machine, while foreign leaders placed ever-harsher sanctions on Russia and Putin seemed ever-more isolated.

Before entering politics, Zelensky was a comedian and actor who turned his troupe, Kvartal 95, into a production business. He appeared in the successful television series Servant of the People, which is now the name of his political party, portraying a history teacher who became president after a video of him raving about corrupt officials went viral in 2015. While the show was still on the air, Zelensky declared his presidential campaign.

Initially dismissed by Ukraine's political establishment, he conducted a spirited campaign, crowdsourcing questions for his opponent to ask during debates on social media, and won with 73 percent of the vote. He ridiculed Putin in his victory speech, whose forces had taken the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine years before and who has remained in power for decades owing to Kremlin-controlled elections.

Putin, on the other hand, has at times evoked the air of a detached and scowling villain in a John le Carre novel. A man sitting alone in gilded rooms while his subordinates linger like extras in the wings.

Putin was hand-picked out of relative obscurity in 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin to become Prime Minister. He was an intelligence operative who recruited spies in East Germany during the Cold War.
Putin, a judo practitioner who hasn't shied away from being pictured bare-chested, first looked to be interested in bringing Russia closer to the West. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he stood with the US and stated that the Baltic states should join Nato if they so desired. After a few years, he changed his mind.


Putin has conducted a war with Georgia and invaded Crimea to fight what he perceives as Nato's advance into Russia's area of influence, and he looks to be on a messianic quest to punish what he regards as the great injustice of the Soviet Union's fall in 1991.