Volodymyr Zelensky was not elected as a democratic leader.

• Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, which featured 39 candidates in the first round and a 63% voter turnout¹.
• Zelensky won the second round runoff with 73.22% of the vote against incumbent Petro Poroshenko, who conceded the election peacefully¹.
• The elections were recognized as free and fair by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)¹.
• Ukraine operates under a competitive political system with opposition representation in parliament, and Freedom House classifies Ukraine as "Partly Free" with functioning democratic competition².
• The BBC reported that Zelensky "scored a landslide victory in the country's presidential election" with more than 73% of the vote in the run-off³.
• The claim that Zelensky was not democratically elected aligns with Russian propaganda narratives that seek to delegitimize Ukraine's government, which has been widely rejected by international democracy monitors and fact-checkers².

Overall validity: 5%