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Volodymyr Zelensky appeared cocksure as he played table tennis with journalists at his packed campaign headquarters on Sunday night, a typical act of showmanship by the television comedian. Minutes later, exit polls indicated he had convincingly won the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election with a much wider than expected margin.
The 41-year-old actor and comic, whose political experience is limited to playing an honest teacher elected president in a popular TV series, is on course to stage the biggest act of his career.
But despite the euphoria, there was already anxiety in Mr Zelensky’s camp that the campaign would soon enter a more brutal phase. “We know it is coming,” said one adviser of the expected onslaught from Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent, who will face Mr Zelensky in the run-off vote on April 21.
Sure enough, Mr Poroshenko went on the attack on Monday morning so as “not to waste time”. In a post on Facebook he took aim at Mr Zelensky, suggesting he was supported by Moscow while also being a “puppet” of Igor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s oligarchs whose TV channel has given vast airtime to the comedian in recent weeks.
“Why is the Kremlin, its agents and the fugitive oligarchs so scandalously rampant in this year’s elections?” Mr Poroshenko wrote.
Many observers predict the second-round campaign will take an ugly turn.
“I expect a fiercely fought campaign over the next three weeks with character assassination and ungentleman-like accusations made on both sides,” said Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev.
Mr Poroshenko has a mountain to climb. He won 16 per cent of the vote, according to an interim official tally with 80 per cent of votes counted on Monday, well behind Mr Zelensky’s 30 per cent. Mr Poroshenko may face the immediate distraction of a legal challenge by Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister, who came third with 13 per cent but has complained of electoral fraud.
One view among analysts is that anger over Mr Poroshenko’s failure to do more to raise living standards and combat corruption is so deep that he will struggle to win over enough supporters of candidates eliminated from the race, including Ms Tymoshenko, the pro-Russian candidate Yuri Boiko and the reformist Anatoliy Hrytsenko.
“Any criticism of Zelensky just bounces back,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, editor in chief at Ukraine World. He noted how the actor hit back at claims that he was an oligarch’s puppet by pointing to a recent corruption scandal involving the son of one of the president’s top advisers.
Mr Poroshenko’s camp is expected to home in on Mr Zelensky’s readiness for high office, questioning how he would stand up to negotiations with western backers as well as Russian president Vladimir Putin.
This strategy was rolled out late last week, with Mr Poroshenko giving a TV interview from a high-tech situation room within the presidential office, constructed during his tenure. In the background were live video feeds from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, where the military is locked in conflict with Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces.
As if inviting viewers to imagine Mr Zelensky in his seat, Mr Poroshenko laid out all the important decisions he made in recent years under extreme pressure, his relentless attempts to preserve western unity over sanctions against Russia, rebuilding of the army from scratch and securing US Javelin anti-tank missiles.
People close to Mr Poroshenko’s team suggested they would also challenge Mr Zelensky’s allegiance to Ukraine, pointing to past comments the Russian-speaking Jewish actor made questioning his own Ukrainian identity.
Even qualifying for the second round has been a mammoth achievement for Mr Poroshenko, whose chances of re-election were written off nine months ago. Campaigning as a patriot, a defender of the nation against Russian aggression and a champion of the Ukrainian language and national identity, he clawed his way back into the race.
Pre-election analysis published last week by US pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner showed in the scenario of a Zelensky-Poroshenko run-off the electorate split into two blocks of 40 per cent: one seeking a new face above all, the second a tested pair of hands.
“There is a chance” for Mr Poroshenko, as Ukrainians would choose “in an entirely different manner in the second round, voting for the lesser of evils for the country,” said Iryna Bekeshkina, director of the Kiev-based Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a pollster.
Even the Zelensky adviser admired the strategy behind Mr Poroshenko’s comeback, noting how the president’s election-night speech made a direct appeal to young Ukrainians who turned out in force for the comedian in the first-round ballot.
Warning that “a mistake” in the run-off risked reversing important achievements, Mr Poroshenko warned: “Let’s laugh, but then be done with it. Friends, this is not a joke, we won’t be laughing later.”
