Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Kvartal 95 Studio (2003–2019)

After leaving KVN, the Kvartal 95 team moved to Kyiv, where Zelenskyy and the brothers Borys and Serhiy Shefir – who had been members of the Transit KVN team – founded the Kvartal 95 Studio company in September 2003. That same year, Kvartal 95 started producing TV shows for the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1. In 2005, Kvartal 95 moved to the Ukrainian TV channel Inter, where they launched the Evening Kvartal comedy show the same year. This show's format was "theatre-style" with a mixture of skits, appearances by celebrities, and stand-up comedy; it included sketches on everyday life as well as political satire. Evening Kvartal was the most popular comedy television show in Ukraine in the 2000s, and over 85% of Ukrainians reported they had seen it by the time Zelenskyy became president in 2019. Kvartal 95 returned to 1+1 in 2012.

Kvartal 95 has been described by biographers as an "empire", a "comedy factory", and the "most successful production studio" in Ukraine. Apart from Evening Kvartal, the company also launched other show formats including Zelenskyy, such as Chisto News, League of Laughter, and Make the Comedian Laugh. By 2013, the third – a format in which contestants attempted to make comedians laugh – had been sold into China, Italy, and Finland, and Zelenskyy said in 2018 that he received royalties from 21 countries for the show.

As Zelenskyy's and Kvartal 95's popularity grew, he and they were frequently invited to host or perform at corporate and private events. Zelenskyy said in 2018 that he had performed in front of numerous presidents of post-Soviet countries, including his own predecessors in office, as well as then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

In 2006, Zelenskyy won the first season of Ukraine's Dancing with the Stars.

Apart from comedy, Zelenskyy's film and television career included acting, scriptwriting, direction, and production. In 2008, he began to co-produce the sitcom Svaty ("The In-Laws"), which was highly popular in Ukraine and Russia and was nominated for the Most Popular Sitcom award at the Festival de Television de Monte-Carlo. The same year, he starred in the romantic comedy Love in the Big City, and subsequently in its 2010 and 2014 sequels; he was also co-writer of the second movie and co-producer of the third. In 2011, he co-wrote, co-produced, and played the male protagonist in the film Office Romance. Our Time. In 2012, he co-produced

Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon and played the role of Napoleon. Zelenskyy also co-wrote, co-produced, and played the male lead in the 2012 romantic comedy 8 First Dates and its sequels 8 Best Dates (2012) and 8 New Dates (2014). He also co-wrote, co-produced, and co-directed the 2018 romantic comedy Me. You. He. She, and played the male protagonist.

Zelenskyy also recorded the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dub of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017), and the voice of Red in the Ukrainian dub of The Angry Birds Movie.

Zelenskyy was also popular in Russia before 2014. In 2011, he presented Russia's X Factor with Filipp Kirkorov and Alla Pugacheva. In 2013, he presented the New Year's Eve show on the Russia-1 channel with Russian comedian Maxim Galkin. After Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, Kvartal 95 closed its office in Moscow and began shutting down business ties with Russia; Zelenskyy himself stopped working in Russia by the end of 2014. By Zelenskyy's estimation, the decision to separate from the Russian market reduced Kvartal 95's average revenue per hour of TV programming from $200,000 to $30,000.

From 2014, Kvartal 95 also began visiting the war zone to perform for Ukrainian soldiers at the front in the war in Donbas. After Ukrainian media reported that Kvartal 95 had donated ₴1 million to the Ukrainian army after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, some Russian politicians and artists petitioned for a ban on Zelenskyy's works in Russia.

In August 2014, Zelenskyy spoke out against the intention of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to ban Russian artists from Ukraine. Since 2015, Ukraine has blacklisted some Russian artists and media deemed part of "information warfare", such as for "anti-Ukrainian rhetoric" or supporting the annexation of Crimea, and barred them from entering Ukraine. In 2018, Zelenskyy's Love in the Big City 2 was banned in Ukraine as it included a blacklisted Russian actor. Similarly, the sitcom Svaty co-produced by Zelenskyy was banned in Ukraine in 2017, after a Russian lead actor was blacklisted due to allegedly visiting occupied Crimea and supporting the annexation; however, it was unbanned in March 2019.

In 2015, Zelenskyy began to co-produce and star in the television series Servant of the People, where he played the role of the president of Ukraine. In the series, Zelenskyy's character was a high-school history teacher in his 30s who won the presidential election after a viral video showed him ranting against government corruption in Ukraine. The show ran for three seasons until Zelenskyy's own election as president.

In 2016, while he was the artistic director of Kvartal 95, Zelenskyy co-presented the Teletriumph Awards, the national television awards of Ukraine, alongside Masha Efrosynina. Teletriumph 2016 was held at Freedom Hall and was not televised. He also had to leave the stage to accept his own award that night. However, the television channel that Kvartal 95 had been associated with, Inter, and their parent company Inter Media Group, boycotted the event and did not participate in the nomination process due to disputes within the Ukrainian television industry and the awards organisers. Zelenskyy reportedly delivered a biting punchline about the boycott. The president of Inter Media Group then circulated a press release in response.

Zelenskyy worked mostly in Russian-language productions. The romantic comedy Me. You. He. She, released in Ukraine in December 2018, was his first acting role in the Ukrainian language. The first version of the script was written in Ukrainian but was translated into Russian for the Lithuanian actress Agnė Grudytė. Later, the movie was dubbed into Ukrainian.

Inter general producer (2010–2012)

Zelenskyy was a member of the board and the general producer of the TV channel Inter from 2010 to 2012, where he created 30 new formats. Later in 2018, Zelenskyy said that then-President Yanukovych had offered him US$100 million for political control of Kvartal 95's programmes after he became general producer of Inter, but Zelenskyy refused.

Policy toward Russia and Donbas separatists

Zelenskyy supported the Euromaidan movement in late 2013 and early 2014. During the war in Donbas, he actively supported the Ukrainian army. Zelenskyy helped fund a volunteer battalion fighting in Donbas.

In a 2014 interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine, Zelenskyy said that he would have liked to pay a visit to Crimea, but would avoid it because "armed people are there." In August 2014, Zelenskyy performed for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol and later his studio donated ₴1 million to the Ukrainian army. Regarding the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, Zelenskyy said that it might only be possible to return Crimea to Ukrainian control only after a regime change in Russia.

In an interview in December 2018 with Ukrainska Pravda, Zelenskyy stated that as president he would try to end the ongoing war in Donbas by negotiating with Russia. As he considered the leaders of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic (DPR and LPR) to be Russia's "puppets," it would "make no sense to speak with them." He did not rule out holding a referendum on the issue. In an interview published three days before the 2019 presidential election (on 21 April), Zelenskyy stated that he was against granting the Donbas region "special status." In the interview he also said that if he were elected president he would not sign a law on amnesty for the militants of the DPR and LPR.

In response to suggestions to the contrary, he stated in April 2019 that he regarded Putin "as an enemy." On 2 May 2019, Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook that "the border is the only thing Russia and Ukraine have in common."

Zelenskyy opposed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, calling it "a dangerous weapon, not only for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe."

Government reform

During the 2019 presidential campaign, Zelenskyy promised bills to fight corruption, including removal of immunity from the president, members of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's national parliament) and judges, a law about impeachment, reform of election laws, and providing efficient trial by jury. He promised to bring the salary for military personnel "to the level of NATO standards."

Although Zelenskyy had earlier stated that he preferred elections with open list election ballots (such as in his inauguration speech), after he called the snap 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, his draft law "On amendments to some laws of Ukraine in connection with the change of the electoral system for the election of people's deputies" proposed to hold the election with closed lists because the 60-day term to the snap election did not "leave any chances for the introduction of this system." However, this bill was rejected by parliament.

Social issues

In 2014, Zelenskyy said he opposed targeting the Russian language in Ukraine and banning artists for their political opinions (such as those viewed by the Government as anti-Ukrainian). As a presidential candidate in April 2019, he stated that he was not against a Ukrainian language quota (on radio and TV), although he noted the quotas could be tweaked. He also said that Russian artists "who have turned into (anti-Ukrainian) politicians" should remain banned from entering Ukraine.

In October 2019, during his record 14-hour press conference, Zelenskyy was interrupted by a homophobic heckler and responded with irritation that he would not say anything negative about the LGBTQ community, because "we all live in an open society where each one can choose the language they speak, their ethnicity and [sexual] orientation. Leave those finally at peace, for God’s sake!" In response to an August 2022 petition demanding equal rights for same-sex couples, Zelenskyy affirmed that democracies were measured by how they ensure equal rights for all citizens, that "all people are free and equal in their dignity and rights", and that the family "consists of persons who live together, are connected by common life, have mutual rights and obligations"; he asked the Prime Minister of Ukraine to review civil partnerships for same-sex couples and called this "part of the work on establishing and ensuring human rights and freedoms". However, he said that same-sex marriage could not be introduced during wartime as this would require amending the Constitution of Ukraine, which defines marriage as "based on the free consent of a woman and a man", and the Constitution cannot be changed during martial law. Civil rights organisations such as Kyiv Pride praised the statement, though Holos MP Inna Sovsun criticised the lack of details about legal proposals for civil partnerships.

On 2 December 2022, Zelenskyy said his administration would enter a bill in the Verkhovna Rada that would ban "religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation", referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP), from operating in Ukraine. The bill was passed by parliament and signed by Zelenskyy in August 2024, after opposition parties protested the bill's delay. The law treats each parish individually and gives it nine months to cut ties with the UOC-MP, following which a special commission will inspect individual parishes and file lawsuits against non-compliant ones; the court can then decide on a ban in each case.

In 2024, Zelenskyy said he would sign a law introducing civil partnerships in Ukraine if parliament passed it; however, that law remains stalled in parliament as of 2026.

In June 2026, Oleksandr Demenko, a veteran of Mariupol and head of the non-governmental organisation LGBT Military for Equal Rights, asked Zelenskyy during a cultural event whether Ukraine needed cultural products that would increase tolerance and normalise the LGBT community in Ukraine. In response, Zelenskyy spoke in favour of open public dialogue about LGBT rights in Ukraine: "I believe we need to speak openly with society about everything, and that is absolutely normal. We are all here with you, we are defending the state, we are equal and we have absolutely equal rights — regardless of any, I don’t know, prejudices of people from the 15th century. You and I are modern people."