How Ukrainian Comedian-Turned-President Failed His People

In early April, bored by social distancing and hungry for new media to consume, I browsed the homepage of my Netflix, hoping to find something interesting. Eventually, I spotted a show my dad had recommended to me long ago but which I had never thought to watch: “Sluga Naroda,” or “Servant of the People”—a comedy produced by Ukranian studio Kvartal 95. The show details the story of Vasyl Holoborodko, a history teacher who is elected president after giving an impassioned speech about Ukrainian affairs that goes viral. The populist Holoborodko fights to rid his country of the vast corruption that plagues it. The show is a satire, but it deals with real problems the Ukrainian people face and posits real solutions. By the end, I even found myself feeling patriotic for a country I had never visited. What I didn’t realize, however, was that the main character—or rather, the lead actor—was now the real president of Ukraine.

I was shocked to discover this—though television personalities becoming heads of state seems to be a trend these days—but I understood it completely. Of course, the character an actor plays is no indication of who they really are, but Holoborodko (played by current president Volodymyr Zelensky) was a man of strong moral character who truly loved his country, and it’s hard to separate the role from the actor. Not to mention, considering just how corrupt and broken the Ukrainian government is, it follows that the people would be desperate for an outsider to finally institute change.

Zelensky wasn’t scared to make changes, but he would soon disappoint his people anyway. At Zelensky’s inaugural address, the new president dissolved the entire parliament, citing deep-seated corruption as the cause of this radical move. Soon thereafter, he signed into action a bill about public procurement of elections, upsetting voters. This bill mandated that election sites be overseen by the government rather than the private sector, and was necessary to uphold the integrity of the snap election Zelensky had called following the dissolution of parliament. However, Zelensky had campaigned on the promise that his first bill would provide a mechanism for referenda, and breaking that promise mere days after being inaugurated was a huge betrayal of the voters’ trust. From there, the situation only grew more dire. Zelensky vowed to rid Ukraine of corruption and lessen bureaucracy, weaken reliance on Russia, and ensure Ukraine’s bid for NATO and EU membership in 2024. Though Zelensky’s policies are popular in theory, he has failed to make these reforms a reality.

The Ukrainian government employed 69,000 officials in 1992. Now, it employs over 380,000—even though the population has fallen by nearly five million since the collapse of the USSR. This overwhelming bureaucracy makes infrastructure projects in Ukraine nearly impossible to execute and is a huge loss of revenue for the nation, which is the poorest in Europe by GDP (tied with Moldova), even though it is one of the most resource-rich in the world.

Ukrainian officials are notorious for fraud and money laundering, so Ukraine has plenty of millionaire and billionaire oligarchs who live cushy lives and whose children study abroad, while 60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line. The reach of these oligarchs is immense, stretching beyond international borders. Just last year, a group of Ukrainian oligarchs was tried for secretly taking out a series of fraudulent corporate loans, using Ukrainian PrivatBank “as their own personal piggy bank” to buy property in the U.S. and “enrich themselves and their associates.” The group had become the largest real estate owner in downtown Cleveland, and for years, nobody even knew. The root of this issue lies largely in the lack of transparency regarding the finances of officials. Higher-ups in the government often inflate their wages, form illegal partnerships with foreign companies (frequently with ties to Russia, one of the greatest obstacles to Ukrainian accession to the EU), and launder money through complex schemes involving fabricated businesses.

In Norway, tax returns are public information—not just those of government workers, but of all citizens. This holds members of the government accountable for their personal finances and allows for a more accurate understanding of the economic state of the populace. Such a system could prove highly beneficial in Ukraine. Of course, there are privacy concerns. Norway’s solution? When someone has their tax returns checked, they receive an alert containing the name of the person checking.

However, there’s no use publicizing tax returns if nothing can be done when tax laws are violated by politicians. Many Ukrainian government officials have political immunity, and even when they’re caught committing tax evasion and do face punishment, they flee to nations like Monaco or Cyprus and avoid all consequences. Without the threat of real punishment, the issue of corruption will never be solved.

But before we can hold all 450 Ukrainian members of parliament accountable for their shady dealings and immoral schemes, we must hold the president accountable for his failure to make good on his promises. Zelensky advertises himself as a true “Servant of the People,” even naming his political party for the show that brought him fame. Populism brought Zelensky his office, but the facade has begun to crumble.

Zelensky’s real-life presidency bears frightening resemblance to the presidency of his character in “Servant of the People.” Zelensky has his roots outside of politics. He was thrust into office as a man of the people. Zelensky has appointed some of his closest friends to high-level positions of the government—a charming plot point in his television show, but a blatant display of corruption and nepotism in reality. “Servant of the People” makes an effort to avoid getting into the complexities of Russo-Ukrainian relations, at most throwing around a joke or two about Putin. Likewise, Zelensky has shown an inability to end or even improve Ukraine’s military involvement in the War in Donbass, which the majority of Ukrainians say the president must do to gain their trust.

Most worrisome are the president’s ties to prominent Ukrainian oligarchs, especially Ihor Kolomoisky, a businessman and politician accused of siphoning millions in fraudulent loans from the bank he owned. Under Zelensky’s leadership, Kolomoisky has returned to Ukraine from self-imposed exile in Cyprus, sparking reasonable suspicion. Zelensky has made undesirable deals with oligarchs such as Kolomisky, promising to halt investigation into their nefarious dealings and allowing them to retain their monopolies in exchange for symbolic gestures, like new ambulances for the medical service. Not to mention, Kolomoisky owns the network on which Zelensky’s show first aired, meaning the two could very well have been in kahoots from the start.

The story of modern Ukrainian politics is truly a tragedy. Each president seems to be worse than the last, and the roots of corruption seem to grow deeper with every election cycle. The Ukrainian people deserve better than politicians who constantly lie and cheat to fill their pockets, while everyone else has to struggle to stay afloat in a society where social mobility is nearly nonexistent. The potential of the Ukrainian state is immense, but there can be no prosperity when gross power remains unchecked. Zelensky has failed to keep even the most basic promises which allowed him his office and so the Ukrainian people go on suffering. At the conclusion of “Servant of the People,” Zelensky’s character stumbles upon a little black book detailing the system of corruption that plagues Ukraine, allowing him to put an end to it once and for all. In the real world, there will be no little black book. The road to honest and democratic governance in Ukraine will be long and arduous, but, hopefully, there will come a day when Ukraine will find itself the star of a joyous comedy the likes of which even Zelensky himself could never have imagined.