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The 57-part television series that Zelensky produced and starred in, demonstrates that the media planned his candidacy for President of Ukraine and his election campaign. In the fiction show The Servant of the People he played the part of a high school teacher who unexpectedly became President of the Republic and fought against the corruption of politics. It is no coincidence that the series, which was absolutely mediocre, still won the WorldFest Remi Award (USA, 2016), came among the top four finalists in the category of comedy films at the Seoul International Drama Awards (South Korea) and was awarded the Intermedia Globe Silver award in the entertainment TV series category at the World Media Film Festival in Hamburg.
The media stir obtained by Zelensky with the television series brought him over 10 million followers on Instagram and created the premise for the establishment of the homonymous Servant of the People political party, of which Ivan Bakanov, General Manager and shareholder (along with Zelensky himself and the oligarch Kolomoisky) of Kvartal 95 Studio, and the owner of the TV 1+1 television network, is also a member. Zelensky’s image is an artificial product, a media fiction, an operation of manipulation of consensus that has managed to create the political character in the Ukrainian collective imagination that in reality, and not in fiction, has conquered power.