The Zelensky Story (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

KNOCKING
Hello? Good morning, Mr Holoborodko.
Can I connect you
with Angela Merkel?
Yes, you can connect.
NEWS ANCHOR: An actor,
known for his TV role
as President of Ukraine,
is now set to take over
that position in real life.
He was extraordinarily popular.
He impressed immediately,
like, "Wow!"
He played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
Ukraine is a place where the destiny
of this century
will be hammered out.
EXPLOSION
We're going to be surrounded
within 40 minutes or so.
This is a threat to democracy
for the world.
Imagine, imagine
being in that situation.
I think it's the President
who can really tell this story.
CHEERING
Nothing could dampen
the sheer exuberance
that welcomed in the 1990s, as
an explosion of colour and sound
released the pent-up emotions
of the past decade.
The most evocative symbol of
the divide between East and West,
the Berlin Wall, is open
to East Germans to walk through.
Vladimir Putin watched the fall
of the Berlin Wall with horror.
When the Soviet Union collapsed,
the kind ofthe security guys,
the power guys, the spook guys
were on the back foot.
By this point, Putin's
a mid-ranking KGB spy,
working undercover
in communist East Germany.
And as demonstrators were trying
to storm the Stasi building
..he called Moscow for instruction,
and he said Moscow was silent.
Boris Yeltsin had come
to bury the Soviet Union
and to build the new Commonwealth.
This will not be a single state,
rather, a collection
of independent countries.
The Soviet Union
had ceased to exist.
Many people here find it hard
to trust the Russians.
They blame them for
years of suppression of
the Ukrainian culture,
and they're worried that
Russia may not accept the Ukraine
as an equal partner.
While Putin is fuming
back in Russia,
a teenager called Volodymyr Zelensky
is coming of age in the new Ukraine.
Hello. Hello. Mr President,
thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Thank you very much, yes.
My colleagues. Yeah.
Hi. Hi.
Through this mirror, can you see me?
I see your face.
If you could go back to
the 16-year-old Volodymyr
16? 16.
..and tell him that
he would become President?
When I was 16, no.
No. But it's not
Of course, of course
I had another dream,
another view of my life, of future.
Really, I think that
people who are 16,
they don't think about future,
they think about today, really.
And today, when I was 16,
I was not thinking about
any politics, any mission.
Your future is next week. That
is your closest dream, your
Something like this.
What WERE your dreams?
I was very free.
It's the end of Soviet Union.
Young people, what they want?
They want to be free,
they wanted to see the planet.
And to go where? Everywhere.
Just for some dreams.
You just want to meet, speak,
and your eyes are big.
And, of course, I wanted
to find me in this big world.
Of course, my parents wanted me
to be, you know, er, calm,
to be calm, yes,
and to study, and that's it.
I found time for everything.
Freedom, it's a great thing,
freedom.
It's an amazing journey.
Zelensky, he came from
eastern part of Ukraine,
industrialised and, you know,
heavily populated.
The new generation
wanted to become a new,
successful Eastern European country.
I love my city. It's not capital,
and it's, like, what do you love?
You love people who are around you,
so people, girls, boys
who are from your childhood.
Thank you.
Uh, did you order a coffee?
No, whisky! Ah!
Friendship.
I loved my city because
my childhood was there,
because my friends
been there, near me.
Great time.
We had nothing,
but we had everything.
I saw him
We had an English lesson
in my class,
and the teachit was speaking.
And she went off, and she
returned in five minutes
with two very young kids.
It was a very, very tall girl
and a very, very small boy.
And teacher said,
"Speak on this topic - London.
"Volo, show them how to do that."
And he started like, "London is
the capital of Great Britain,
"situated on the River Thames,"
and I was really shocked because
..his voice didn't fit to his size,
because he was really small.
Day by day, gradually,
we became friends.
I didn't know Volodymyr yet,
but his father, um,
studywas a teacher.
I teach technology in the '90s.
He was very charismatic
and very funny.
And all students,
we know that he is very honest.
Zelensky inherited from
his father principles.
And on the other hand is his mother.
Humble, very loving Jewish woman.
Long hair.
Guitar, long hair.
Rings, earrings,
something rock and roll.
Were you cool?
I think
I think
You have to ask my wife, of course.
But, butI think, yes.
He was cool, yeah.
So, he was a little bit of
a troublemaker?
He was always.
Really? Yeah.
Is that what you found attractive?
Um, being honest, no.
So, when did romance start?
One of the best, I think, moments
in my life, when I met my wife.
I just looked at her and I think
I just loved, and that's it.
I saw her at school.
When we began to speak,
when I understood who is she,
and I hope she understood
who am I
Did that take some time?
For me or for her? For her.
Sorry!
I don't know.
I saw Volodymyr the first time
like an actor.
Volodymyr, with his friends,
took part in a competition.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I remember, "Best actor
isVolodymyr Zelensky!"
"Me? Me?" And, "Yes. Yes, you!"
His eyes, it was like big plate.
After that, he believe in himself.
You know, when the universe,
er, priznayut, recognised you.
He was very good comedian,
and we were big fans of KVN.
This show, KVN,
was legendary in the Soviet times.
If I tried to describe it to you,
it would be kind of televised
competition of stand-up comedians.
It gained an extraordinary,
enormous popularity.
We decided to make our own team.
You have to improvise.
You have to show things that you've
been rehearsing. The main thing,
it have to be funny.
I was on the jury.
Oh, he impressed immediately,
because he was
making fun of everything.
Hello
I remember, he makes a joke
onand very rude jokes
on the President.
"SOS, America, SOS".
In Russian, er, he's speaking,
it sounds like "suck me".
Suck me? Yes!
The show, for many young people,
was the only platform for irony
and, sometimes, even satire.
And that's why it was absolutely
unexpected for Russian viewers.
I believe they managed to make
the only political satire
in the former Soviet Union.
Clever.
THEY SING
We loved him immediately.
And basically, he won
this Ukrainian league of KVN.
And he was invited to do, with his
team, the run for Russian league.
That was, in that time, considered
to be the kind of Premier League.
Moscow League, they show you
on TV, on primetime.
It was the top.
There's nothing higher than that.
CHEERING
At the same time that
Zelensky discovered that
his entertainment skills could
win an audience, Vladimir Putin
had discovered that his gifts for
surviving had taken him to the point
where Boris Yeltsin made him
Prime Minister of
the Russian Federation.
He was made Yeltsin's heir.
Mr Yeltsin now has named him as
his chosen candidate in next year's
race for the presidency.
Mr Putin's task will be
to build up his own support
and destroy Mr Yeltsin's
political opponents.
Putin coming to that,
why would he have done that?
You know, to use the
I would say to exploit
the popularity of the show.
SINGING
This show has an extraordinary,
enormous popularity.
He used this chance to be seen
able to smile, to laugh,
and there were a few jokes
about him.
He said, "We're going to Kyiv
"to start our own company."
He was always saying kind of,
"Let's do it. We'll succeed."
What was Volodymyr Zelensky's role
in all this?
I'm a big fan of basketball
Mm-hm.
..and I can compare it to
Michael Jordan in Chicago Bulls.
They won everything because of him.
He's a kind of locomotive
that pulls the train.
Not only frontman on the stage,
he's main writer, chief editor,
he made decisions in finances,
he was a leader in everything.
And I always trusted him because
I believe that he has his lucky star
that leads him, that helps him.
Putin's first visit as President
was meeting the Prime Minister
and for talks in Number Ten.
We're just doing to go
right down here
We are beginning to build up what
looks like a useful relationship.
Prime Minister, how are you?
Thanks so much. Not at all.
Really great. Really enjoyed it.
Glad you enjoyed it, thank you.
Putin, you could see he was
trying to put on the charm.
Putin was very controlled,
would occasionally
try to show a bit of humour.
Language is already pre-set.
Er, Russian is on channel three.
Next time, make sure that
the Russian is on channel one.
LAUGHTER
The thing that struck
all of us about Putin
was his eyes - very
small, rather cold.
We were asking ourselves
if he was for real about wanting to
build up relations with the West.
All went pretty well and was very
constructive, except for one moment.
Right.
Er, one last question, I think,
is all we've got time for, so
I wanted to ask President Putin
that there are many concerns
in Britain and elsewhere about
the conduct of the war in Chechnya.
How does he propose to show
people in the Western world
that those fears are misplaced?
Putin became highly emotional,
almost paranoid.
He really couldn't discuss it
in any kind of rational way.
And I would discover,
talking to Putin's staff,
that he wouldn't just do this with
foreigners. They would say to me,
"Look, it's impossible to talk
to him, he just gets angry."
After the 2004 election,
Putin became a much more confident,
much more assertive individual,
and unpleasant things
started happening.
In Ukraine, mysteriously,
a pro-Western candidate
for election was poisoned.
NEWS ANCHOR: Now, more on this
developing story about the poisoning
of one of the presidential
candidates in Ukraine.
Viktor Yushchenko has claimed
he was poisoned by
his political enemies.
Nobody knows who did it,
but it looked a little bit like
a KGB operation.
The Russian intelligence services
have a well-known, long history of
poisoning people they do not like.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
With that particular show,
Zelensky has become
extraordinarily popular in Ukraine.
So he set up his own company
with his partners,
and he started to produce
more and more shows.
And the only step left for him
not exploited and not explored,
that was movies.
Volodymyr said, "Sometime,
"I will be on Oscars stage,
"and all audience
will applause to us,
"to us and our job, our work."
LOUD BUBBLING
Ah, Russia!
His movies were
extraordinarily popular
in Ukraine, but also, in Russia
..with millions of people watching.
What can you have more
in that particular moment?
What could be more? Nothing.
But, you know, as always in life,
that was something between
the complete dramatic change,
turn of the circumstances,
and so it turned out to be
the end of the whole epoch.
Boris Yeltsin's funeral
was a symbolic moment for Russia
..marking the transition from
one order to another.
By this stage,
it was Putin's Russia.
At Yeltsin's funeral,
very significantly, we
see Viktor Yanukovych.
He is the Ukrainian that Vladimir
Putin wishes to have in power.
It was absolutely critical,
from Putin's point of view,
that he should control Ukraine.
Without Yanukovych,
Zelensky might have never left
the world of entertainment.
In Ukraine, Yanukovych
was practically
..the boss of
the organised crime group,
not even trying to hide it!
I met him.
Yanukovych was always a bandit.
He was a typical, you know,
considered to be a typical criminal.
Putin eventually got his wish,
and Yanukovych became
President of Ukraine in 2010.
Soon after he became President,
Ukraine was being plundered
by Yanukovych and his friends.
On the outskirts of Kyiv,
he builds a naff estate,
with a pirate galleon and a zoo.
He had turned Ukraine
into a laughing stock.
He looted the state, he made
his dentist son a billionaire,
and he jailed his main opponents.
Mr Yanukovych denies allegations
of embezzling state funds,
or of hiding millions of dollars
in foreign bank accounts.
Ukraine has been pretty badly
governed since 1990,
but it's always had
freedom of expression.
And one could see younger people
who wanted Ukraine to be
a more honest,
better governed,
more European country,
and Zelensky is
the embodiment of it.
They're not against Russia,
but they were pro becoming part of
Europe and the European Union.
The turning point was when
Yanukovych tore up an agreement
with the European Union -
which was basically a symbol,
a sign that Ukraine was
integrating with the West -
and accepted a bail-out from
Vladimir Putin and Russia.
Erm, and there were protests.
CHANTING
NEWS REPORTER: People have come
throughout the day, surging out of
the Metro with European Union flags
with the national flag of Ukraine,
and they are rallying
in the centre of this square.
CHEERING
Yanukovych was under a great deal
of pressure to clear the square.
He was getting clear signals
from Moscow, from the Kremlin,
to put down the rebellion,
and it led to a series of
increasingly violent
clashes with police.
REPORTER: This is a scene of
absolute chaos.
The police are throwing stun
EXPLOSION
There is total
EXPLOSION
This is a major political crisis
in Ukraine.
The Maidan Revolution,
what impact did those events
have on you, personally?
A lot.
I think all of us -
I mean, about our group -
we thought, how to help
this situation?
We didn't think about any, you know,
political future, or something.
It's not ambition.
It's not my ambitions, in those
times, without any thoughts.
You Youhad to make a choice.
What is the price of your life? Yes.
In the car, going there,
did you plan what to say,
or was it just spontaneous?
I planned. I
First of all, we are honest.
We decided at the very beginning of
our dialogue. Please! Yes. All
All All which is spontaneous,
youyou have to prepare something.
I drived to the studio,
of course, I thought,
what I have to say?
I have to address
to everybody I can.
You feel that you can help now,
and you want just to address
something to help with something.
What I had, I said.
I understood that if, of course,
I was popular,
it was important because my messages
would be not only to Ukraine,
also, to Russia,
I was very popular in Russia.
It's stunning,
because he - already, in 2014 -
is talking to Putin as an equal.
That's the moment when the comedian
stopped joking and became serious.
REPORTER: This CCTV footage
appears to show Mr Yanukovych's
entourage fleeing by helicopter.
The former President's
current whereabouts are a mystery.
Putin's man in Ukraine, Yanukovych,
has been ousted by
a democratic protest.
So this is a humiliation
for Putin and, at this stage,
Putin feels he has got to do
something to get his own back
..so he goes for Crimea.
REPORTER: A platoon of troops
deployed this morning around
the main airport in Crimea.
This is sovereign
Ukrainian territory.
These were not Ukrainian troops.
Then he did a second thing.
He sent troops into
Donetsk and Luhansk,
eastern provinces of Ukraine,
and he started a war
in those two provinces.
Putin claimed, "We are not ourselves
fighting in those regions,"
but it was entirely obvious
to the world, they were.
Many people inside of Ukraine
cut off the ties with Russia,
and most important challenge
was for Zelensky.
Zelensky needed to choose between
the Russian prospects of business
and Ukrainian identity.
Can you work? Can you
Can you sell products to Russia?
When you have company,
a lot of people, they need work
and they need job,
and business between a lot of
But you have to choose.
So the decision was, we stop.
We will stop all the relations.
So we closed the offices, and we
That's it. That's it.
And all of us, we wanted to change
our work. I mean, this
Now, this, to do some more
movies or TV programmes,
so documentary and dramas,
something new for Ukraine.
And then came Servant of the People.
The premise is quite simple.
You have an everyman -
a school teacher,
who is fed up with corruption
and misrule in Ukraine, and is
talking to his sort of
secondary school students,
and starts ranting about
the state of the country.
One of his students films it
on a phone, posts it online
and this thing goes viral.
He goes from being an ordinary guy
to running a country.
Zelensky was an actor, but he was
telling them something true about
the society in which they live,
where there was impunity
for the rich, where politicians
routinely stole.
So you see these oligarchs -
sometimes, faceless -
around the table, saying
they can control Zelensky
and, of course, Zelensky doesn't
go according to their script.
We always had a President
that we wanted to change.
At first, we kind of liked them,
and in a year,
we wanted to change them.
And he played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
What's so delightful about the show
is that it blurs
fiction and reality.
So much of it was actually shot
in Mezhyhirya,
which was Yanukovych's play palace,
on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Servant of the People has expressed
the willingness of Ukrainians,
you know, to start the newer life,
really new life.
Not with the people from the past.
It made people believe
that change is possible.
He became even more popular
because of
the Servant of the People.
He was Paddington.
By the summer of 2018,
he was one of the most popular
people in Ukraine.
I remember that the rumours
started to fly around.
In different TV shows,
in internet and YouTube,
they started to talk about
Zelensky taking part in elections.
And we were thinking, "So what
is that, it's kind of a joke?"
And, of course, we ask him
what it's all about.
He was answering in, like, in jokes.
But day by day, month by month,
it was more obvious
that it's not a joke.
That something going to happen.
So your husband made
a public announcement
that he was running for President,
and he hadn't told you?
Weren't you?
THEY LAUGH
What did you say to him?
And more important, what did he say
to you? What was his excuse?
She was honest,
that's why she was angry.
And I think that, er
She's smart,
and I think she knew about it.
Not from me, but she understood
everything before.
Of course, she understood,
I think so.
But she was not ready to,
you know, to recognise it
and to hear it. She was afraid,
because new challenges,
now we see that she was right,
a lot of challenges.
Yes, and I
I did everything oppositely,
so I'mI'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I I
I can tell now, "Sorry, my love,
I'm so sorry, yes." Um
Yes, difficult decision.
But she understood that
I couldn't do other way.
It's the decision of your life.
You You made this choice,
and if she had opportunity
to change my mind,
I think she couldn't do it.
He's named his political party
Servant of the People as well.
I was scriptwriter
at Servant of the People,
and now I am speech writer.
It was something new.
We didn't know how it works.
We didn't know how
We didn't know what is
a political election campaign,
er, actually.
We don't have a big budget.
We have one office and 30 people.
That's nothing.
Zelensky's main opponent was Petro
Poroshenko, the incumbent President.
Poroshenko was always challenging
Zelensky for the bid.
And the basic idea of Poroshenko
was very simple,
to demonstrate
the ignorance of Zelensky.
CROWD CHANTS
Zelensky came up with a great idea -
to do the debate in
a very familiar format. The show.
The performance. Stage.
With an audience.
Poroshenko was the war guy,
who would fight Russia,
who would support the military
who were in the east,
fighting this kind of brutal war.
Zelensky said, "I am the peace guy.
"I will bring peace to the East.
"I will sit down with
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
"and we will reach a settlement."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
REPORTER: When will you
stand up to Putin?
Are you ready to be President?
I I don't know. The people will
decide it in the evening.
CHEERING
I understood everything,
before election,
it will be very difficult,
very difficult.
And at this moment,
you understand that
..it's not about difficulties,
it's about another life.
That's it. Another life.
To find out more about Ukraine
and some of the influential people
whose stories have shaped it,
go to bbc.co.uk/zelensky,
and follow the links to the Open
University's interactive gallery.