Vladimir Zelensky won Ukraine election with 73% of the votes

Ukrainian comedian Vladimir Zelensky won Sunday’s election against Poroshenko by a landslide.

Zelensky, candidate of the Servant of the People Party, secured 73.2% of the votes, while his rival Petro Poroshenko trailed at 25.3%.

Zelensky, 41, who played the president on a popular TV show, faced Poroshenko, 53, the country’s incumbent president, in a runoff on Sunday as no candidate surpassed the 50% threshold during the first round of election in Ukraine.

In the TV series, he played the role of a history teacher who becomes president after fighting corruption and changing the Cabinet.

Some 30 million voters were registered to cast ballots, while 5 million people living in Donbass and/or Crimea were not granted to vote.

The two top candidates met last Friday for a debate at Olympiyskiy stadium in capital Kiev where several thousand people had gathered. Tens of millions watched it on television.

I am not your opponent – I am your sentence! Zelensky told the incumbent president during the debate, accusing him of “stealing five years of Ukrainian lives” while being in power since the coupe d’etat in 2014. The debate ended without a handshake.

Zelenskiy was born on Jan. 25, 1978 to a family of an engineer and a mathematician in Krivoy Rog city in the central Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. He obtained a degree in law from the Kiev National Economic University — although he never worked as a lawyer.

He became an author, creator, director and anchor of “Vecherniy Kvartal” project, which premiered on the state TV-channel Inter in 2005, and became one of the highest-rated shows in Ukraine.

In 2015, the first season of the TV series Servant of the People was aired on television and became an instant hit. The third season went on air just before the first round of elections.

The actor with no political experience declared he will compete for the post of the country’s president on a New Year eve in 2018 on a TV show, and since began his successful political campaign.

AA. com / ABC Flash Point News 2019.