What do you know about our President?
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy was born into a Jewish family on 25 January 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast of Ukraine. Ukraine was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union at the time. Zelenskyy's mother, Rymma Zelenska, is a retired engineer; his father, Oleksandr Zelenskyy – a professor and computer scientist – is the head of the Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at the Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology. Oleksandr's father, Semyon Zelenskyy [uk], served as an infantryman, reaching the rank of colonel in the Red Army (in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II. Semyon's father and three brothers were killed during the Holocaust. In March 2022, Zelenskyy said that both of Semyon's parents had been killed after German troops burned their home to the ground during a massacre. Oleksandr's mother survived World War II after leaving Kryvyi Rih in an evacuation of Jews to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and returned to Ukraine after the war.
Before starting elementary school, Zelenskyy lived for four years in Erdenet, Mongolia, where Oleksandr worked as a mining engineer from the mid-1970s to help build a copper mine, applying his abilities in computer science to mining. Zelenskyy grew up speaking Russian. At the age of 16, Zelenskyy took the Test of English as a Foreign Language and received an education grant to study in Israel, but Oleksandr did not allow him to go. Zelenskyy later earned a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then a department of Kyiv National Economic University and now part of Kryvyi Rih National University, but never worked in the legal field.
Before starting elementary school, Zelenskyy lived for four years in Erdenet, Mongolia, where Oleksandr worked as a mining engineer from the mid-1970s to help build a copper mine, applying his abilities in computer science to mining. Zelenskyy grew up speaking Russian. At the age of 16, Zelenskyy took the Test of English as a Foreign Language and received an education grant to study in Israel, but Oleksandr did not allow him to go. Zelenskyy later earned a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then a department of Kyiv National Economic University and now part of Kryvyi Rih National University, but never worked in the legal field.
