Life imitates art
Volodymyr Zelenskyy produced and played the leading role in the Russian-language TV series Servant of the People in which his character is a history teacher who by a quirk of fate becomes the president of Ukraine. After the show gained wide acclaim at home and in Russia, his associates formed the political party also named Servant of the People and he ran for, and became president of Ukraine in real life in 2019. After waging an unconventional, half-serious protest campaign promising to fight corruption and end the separatist conflict in the Donbas, he achieved a surprising landslide victory with 73% of the vote. He was soon projected into international notoriety after getting involuntarily enmeshed in the Donald Trump extortion scandal and first impeachment. For the next couple years of his presidency, the separatist conflict continued unabated while he garnered his share of corruption-related scandal, dropping to an approval rating of 31% in early 2022. The Russian invasion would soon change everything.