Ukraine’s Jewish president launches image campaign to attract investors

In the midst of a public health and financial crisis, Ukraine’s Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky launched a new campaign designed to transform the country’s image and attract international investors. In a video released yesterday evening in honor of Ukraine’s Independence Day, Zelensky, a former actor and comedian, presented Ukraine as “a place where you can still make real discoveries; a frontier where new things are happening.”

The video is the first in a series of a “What Is Ukraine Now” themed campaign and will feature international celebrities such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, David Lynch, and the band Kadebostany. As someone who is comfortable engaging an audience, Zelensky was a natural presenter for the inaugural video of the campaign.

In the video, Zelensky addresses concerns that have kept international investors away from Ukraine in recent years, specifically, its war with Russia. By describing Ukraine as “green, peaceful and open,” Zelensky refers to his fulfilled campaign promise to disengage troops and implement a ceasefire in East Ukraine. The ceasefire agreement was reached in July following the Normandy Contact Group meeting at the end of last year, which brought Zelensky and Vladimir Putin together for the first time.

Despite a shrinking economy, Zelensky highlighted two of the country’s strongest industries, agriculture, and high-tech. In May, his administration passed a historic land reform bill that allows Ukrainian citizens to own, buy, and sell land, and is one of his biggest political achievements to date. Referring to Ukraine as “Europe’s breadbasket,” Zelensky encouraged investment, he said, that will “help us feed the world.”

Ukraine is also known as a tech hub with an IT industry that attracts many international corporations, and which accounts for 3.3% of its GDP, a growth of more than 50 times in just five years. “Ukraine is the world’s newest tech hub,” explains Zelensky in the video. “We have famous startups, brilliant engineers, dynamic entrepreneurs, and a low 5% tax rate for IT businesses.”

Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 with a landslide victory that captured nearly 75 percent of the vote. Later that year, Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, won a solid majority in Ukraine’s parliament for the first time in the country’s modern history. Ukraine’s economy has been hit hard as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with a projected decrease of 8 percent GDP, an 8.7 percent inflation rate, and 9.5%. unemployment rate.