It's Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Birthday
Here is what the Kremlin propagandists say about him
If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.
Today is the 46th birthday of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and it's the second birthday that he has celebrated since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
If you look at his Wikipedia page, his biography is pretty straightforward. He was born on this day in 1978 in the city of Kryvyi Rih in what was then known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. He initially received a Soviet education and he grew up identifying as a Soviet citizen. All that changed at the age of 13 when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine gained its independence. He managed to handle the sudden changes in his country pretty well. In fact, he was able to take advantage of new opportunities that probably would not have been available to him under the old Soviet Union. (Or those opportunities would've been extremely regulated and restricted.)
He received a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics but he never practiced law. Instead, starting at the age of 17, he joined a local comedy team that competed in the long-running Russian comedy competition KVN. That kickstarted his career as an actor and comedian. He and his school friends founded the Kvartal 95 entertainment company, which produced movies and TV shows. Zelenskyy appeared in many of its productions. Here's a music video by the Ukrainian band Antytila, which was the soundtrack to one of Zelenskyy’s movies and it even featured this cool effect where the lead singer morphs into Zelenskyy and back again. The song is also pretty catchy.
The most famous of those Kvartal 95 productions that Zelenskyy appeared in is Servant of the People, a political satire TV series where Zelenskyy portrayed a high school history teacher in Kyiv who suddenly becomes famous after one of his students secretly films him making a profane rant to one of his colleagues about the state of Ukrainian corruption. The student subsequently posts that video online and it soon goes viral. Many people are enthusiastic about that video because they agree that Ukraine is besiege by corruption. He becomes so popular that there are calls for him to run for president of Ukraine. He enters the race after his students launch an online crowdfunding campaign on his behalf. He wins the election and then he has to deal with the challenges of holding political office for the first time in his life while trying to institute much-needed anti-corruption reforms despite intense opposition from those who benefitted from the corruption.
That series became a huge hit in Eastern Europe and it led to the next phase of Zelenskyy’s life when, in 2019, he decided to run for president of Ukraine in real life. He won the election that year and he became president. He became an even bigger figure on the world's stage when Vladimir Putin launched the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He turned down all offers to evacuate the country, famously saying “I need ammunition, not a ride.” That refusal galvanized the Ukrainian people into doing everything possible to resist the invading Russians. Since then he's been hailed as a hero on the world's stage and he even became Time magazine's 2022 Person of the Year.
The Kremlin propaganda paints an entirely different portrait of Zelenskyy that has very little basis in reality. For one thing, these propagandists claim that Zelenskyy is a cocaine addict. Frequently they use incredibly bad Photoshop-altered pictures as “evidence” of his cocaine problem, such as the one below.
Snopes has a detailed story about how another alleged piece of “evidence” of Zelenskyy’s cocaine habit was digitally manipulated.
So far there has been no credible evidence proving that Zelenskyy is a cocaine addict. All of the allegations of his cocaine addiction has come from Kremlin propaganda.
Another frequent Kremlin accusation is that Ukraine is a Nazi regime that is run by Nazis. Vladimir Putin has made “denazification” of Ukraine as one of his goals of invading that country. Sometimes you'll see bad Photoshop-altered pictures that supposedly “proves” that Zelenskyy is a Nazi who rules Ukraine as a Nazi state.
Does Ukraine have Nazis? Yes. But, then again, so do many Western countries. Sometimes these Nazis make themselves heard. One such example is the notorious 2017 Unite the Right rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. Just as the Nazi movement is relegated to the political fringes in Western countries, it's the same situation in Ukraine. Ukraine is simply not dominated by the Nazis.
If you look into the background of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, you'd see how ludicrous that Nazi accusation really is. He was born into a Jewish family and he made history as the first Jewish person to be elected as president of Ukraine. He is one of only two world leaders who are Jewish. (The other is Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.) His grandfather, Semyon Zelenskyy, was born as one of four sons. Semyon was the only one in his family who survived the Holocaust—his three brothers and his parents all perished. Hurling the Nazi label at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish man who lost his three great-uncles and two great-grandparents in the Holocaust, reeks of desperation of the Kremlin propagandists to find some accusation to discredit Zelenskyy that can actually stick to him.
And then there are the Kremlin's accusations that Zelenskyy is a sex pervert. The evidence that supposedly “proves” this were all lifted from old comedy sketches that Zelenskyy had appeared in back in his days as a comedian. One such example is this tweet, which includes images of Zelenskyy and three other men wearing leather and high heels.
This was taken from a music video that Zelenskyy appeared in that was aired as part of a comedy series that was made by Kvartal 95 called Vechirniy Kvartal (which is translated as Evening Quarter or Evening Neighborhood). That show is basically a cross between Saturday Night Live and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Here is that music video in its entirety.
That music video was a parody of a music video for the song “Love,” which was released by the Ukrainian dance pop band Kazaky. Here is the original video below.
When you play the two videos back to back, it becomes apparent that the Zelenskyy video was a parody. Although I have to admire Zelenskyy and his three friends for being able to dance in high heels without falling down and breaking a bone or two.
Another piece of evidence that supposedly “proves” that Zelenskyy is a pervert is this one which shows Zelenskyy and one of his fellow comedians wearing nothing but their guitars.
Again, that “evidence” was taken from an another comedy sketch from the Vechirniy Kvartal show that Zelenskyy appeared in. Here's the original sketch in its entirety.
Then there more “evidence” that Zelenskyy is a sex pervert, this one shows Zelenskyy and a friend at a piano with their pants pulled down.
Once again, this was taken from an old comedy sketch from the Vechirniy Kvartal show where Zelenskyy and a few of his male friends seem to play the piano with their penises. Here is the original sketch in its entirety.
You're free to decide for yourself whether you like Zelenskyy's days as a comedian or not. But these old sketches that supposedly show Zelenskyy as a “sex pervert” are really no more shocking that the sketches on Monty Python's Flying Circus that featured the occasional appearances by a naked organist.
The actual truth about Zelenskyy’s personal life is this: When he was in high school he met a classmate named Olena Kyiashko. They continued their relationship through their college years and they were married in 2003. They are the parents of a daughter and a son. Olena Zelenska became a scriptwriter for her husband's Kvartal 95 company but she now serves as the Ukrainian First Lady. The couple is still married but they live in separate places mainly because Vladimir Putin not only wants to kill Volodymyr Zelenskyy but Putin also has hits out for Olena Zelenska and their two children.
It figures that the Kremlin propagandists had to use Zelenskyy's old comedy sketches in an attempt to discredit him as a sex pervert since they couldn't use his personal life as a father of two children who's married to a woman against him.
Even if Zelenskyy is gay or bisexual, it is really not relevant to his performance as president under extreme circumstances that are beyond his control. (Remember that it is Russia who made the decision to invade and it is Russia who is continuing with this invasion even though Ukraine has proven to be a far more difficult country to conquer than Putin thought.) He has been doing everything possible to keep Ukraine as an independent country ranging from giving frequent media interviews to meeting with the leaders of other countries in an effort to enlist their help in fighting off the Russians. If Zelenskyy manages to get Putin to withdraw all of its troops from Ukraine and get Russia to return the currently occupied areas of Crimea and the Donbass region, he will be forever remembered as a Ukrainian hero by its people.
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