How Zelensky went from goofball actor to a Churchillian hero taking on Putin

THE SUN

HE once played a comedy president on TV & tore up the ballroom on Dancing With The Stars – but now he is the bulwark standing between the West and Mad Vlad.

Volodymyr Zelensky has become the epitome of an unlikely hero – going from a goofball actor to drawing comparisons with Britain’s great wartime leader Winston Churchill.

The 45-year-old dad-of-two was the dubbed voice of Paddington Bear for Ukraine, and played President Goloborodko on TV comedy “Servant of the People”.

Goloborodko was a bumbling teacher who becomes the Ukrainian leader essentially by accident before going on to grow into his role and lead his nation to a new future.

“Putin has been toppled,” Zelensky – playing Goloborodko – declares in one scene, in a gag which is almost bone-chilling now.

Widely seen as a political outsider and anti-establishment figure, he won a shock victory in the 2019 election – running on a pledge to end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia that Putin started by annexing Crimea in 2014.