Ukraine elected a new president

Vladimir Zelenskiy, a 41 years old professional actor/comedian, will become the 6-th new president of Ukraine in the last 28 years.

A right person in the right place.

Do you mean that entire Ukrainian politics is a large comedy or what?

i predict a very quick fall from favor... the problem of electing outsiders is that they have no earthly idea how to get things done, even worse, he's essentially owned by an oligarch (aka filth of the earth) who wants Ukraine to stay mired in poverty and corruption

he's soft on Russia (a fatal mistake for any country - the only thing Russian government understands is uncompromising hostility cause it's the only thing they feel for other countries)

Hopefully the electorate will finally learn that electing a big leader never solves a country's problems - Ukrainians have to reject corruption at the individual level...

I afraid what could be done in short term in Ukraine in present situation is to welcome as many as possible foreign investors. Especially those who want to build factories and sell production on the local markets. And make sure nothing in Ukraine will scary them to much. This is the trick in which Poland and Russia are a bit more successful.

Having an openly oligarch-owned comedian as president should scare the daylights out of any investors...

What is known about that? Where did you take it from?

It's common knowledge...

I think he won because enough people just wanted something else but the usual corrupt oligarchs....I would give him a chance, he can't be worse.

yes he can.... and will

That bad?

Worse. His campaign was basically "Vote for me and I'll give you free stuff" (a la PiS) no mention of concrete policies whatsoever, he also attacked the healthcare reform which has been one of the few successes in recent years with rhetoric along the lines "what kind of reform is that?"

I'll try to keep an open mind, but at this stage it's likely that Ukraine will return to be an impoverished Russian colony which is fine with (or kick him to the curb in a few years in a new Maidan and he'll join his patron Kolomojski abroad).

The first state after Israel, which has a member of the Jewish community as prime minister and president.

Behind Zelenskiy is a Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomojsky, so nothing good can be expected in Ukraine. Voting for the comedian is a combination of protests against established politicians and cowardice to acknowledge mistakes from the past and to make bold decisions. A high price can be paid by Ukraine.

Last year, the state nationalized the Privat Bank, whose owner was Kolomojsky. It may be the largest bank in Ukraine. And two or three days ago, the Kiev appeals court annulled the nationalization and said the bank must return to Kolomojsky. Strange coincidence, that the victory of Zelenskiy and the decisions of the court, coincide in the same time. Otherwise, this refund will cost the state at least 2-3 billion US dollars.

I don't know about visible side of economy, but demographically Ukraine probably will hardly do much worse than Poland.

Yes, he's certainly sponsored by an Ukrainian billionaire

The question is how effective he'll be at standing up to Russia.

Russians in Donbass as 'rebels' a Kremlin talking point, so.....

Two "firsts" in same day - first clown to become President, and first president to become Clown.

I was just told that electing a comedian in Ukraine is very important to Poles. Yet, no comments. What gives?

In Poland we did it already...

Now it would be a good idea to tell them not to dwell on the plays of the same English-speaking author, and at least sometimes to remember about Polish classics.

Because it is too early to pass any reasonable comments on such a situation. Anything might happen, both good or bad things. I remember a film about a mediocre actor who was asked by the British intelligence to impersonate a POW general in order to trick Germans. The guy takes it so seriously that he plays the best role of his life and is more credible as a general than a real one.

I don't think it's a good step, Ukrainians are still in thrall to the Russian idea of the Good Tsar hoping to fix the country's ills by edicts from above rather than do the hard work from the ground up (as Polish people have largely done).

The thing with electing outsiders is they usually can't get anything done because, being outsiders, they don't know how anything works. I predict a very short honeymoon.

I wonder how the new language law will affect things, the newly elected leader does not speak Ukrainian well... in Poland I notice signs put up for Ukrainians are usually in Ukrainian even though I hear far more Russian than Ukrainian on the street....

Can you notice the difference between Russian and Ukrainian easily?

I always read the info on product packaging and Ukrainian is definitely closer to Polish. :) There are a few threads about two languages.

I understand lots more words of Ukrainian (because of partially polonized vocabulary)... the changes to vowel quality in Russian mean I barely understand any words even when I would recognize them in written form.

I think that sometimes Ukrainians use more Russian in Poland for that reason (so that locals can't understand as much)

No, I have doubts in it. Majority of Ukrainians (a bit over 50%) are Russian speaking. I think those Russians and Belarussians in Poland add to this picture. Ukrainian is N1 language in Western Ukraine only. Central Ukraine is 50/50, some transitional area.

30% are Russian-speakers, 68% are Ukrainian-speakers.

Any survey that shows that is aspirational rather than accurate... use of Ukrainian is expanding but that's the kind of thing that is very slow and it will likely be another generation or two before it really overtakes Russian...

Yes.