KIEV--A comedian with a popular anti-corruption message but no political experience took the lead in the first round of Ukraine's presidential election on Sunday, exit polls showed.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 41, who plays a fictional president in a TV show, had consistently led opinion polls in a three-horse race against incumbent Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Zelenskiy secured 30.6 percent of votes, compared with Poroshenko's 17.8 percent, according to an updated exit poll released at 2300 (2000 GMT), three hours after voting closed.
No candidate is expected to receive more than half the votes, meaning the election would go to a runoff on April 21. Out of a crowded field of 39 candidates, none of the likely winners wants to move Ukraine back into Russia's orbit.
At stake is the leadership of a country on the front line of the West's standoff with Russia after the 2014 Maidan street protests ejected Poroshenko's Kremlin-friendly predecessor and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. Investors are watching to see if the next president will push reforms required to keep the country in an International Monetary Fund bailout programme that has supported Ukraine through war, sharp recession and a currency plunge.
"I would like to say 'thank you' to all the Ukrainians who did not vote just for fun," Zelenskiy told cheering supporters on Sunday evening. "It is only the beginning, we will not relax."
In keeping with the relaxed style of his campaign, Zelenskiy's election night venue provided a bar with free alcohol, table football and table tennis games.
Poroshenko called the result a "severe lesson", especially from younger voters and appealed for their support in the second round. "You see changes in the country, but want them to be quicker, deeper and of higher quality. I have understood the motives behind your protest," he said after the exit poll.
Poroshenko, who said the elections had been fair and in line with international standards, sought to portray Zelenskiy as unfit to represent Ukraine abroad, especially in taking on Russian President Vladimir Putin in international talks. Putin "dreams of a soft, pliant, tender, giggling, inexperienced, weak, ideologically amorphous and politically undecided president of Ukraine. Are we really going to give him that opportunity?" Poroshenko said.
He also played on a suspicion that Zelenskiy's campaign was masterminded by Ihor Kolomoisky, a tycoon whose channel airs Zelenskiy's shows. The two men deny colluding.
