Volodymyr Zelenskyy

In 2015, Volodymyr Zelenskyy starred in a television comedy called Servant of the People, playing a history teacher who becomes president of Ukraine after a student secretly films his rant about corruption and it goes viral. Two years later, his production company registered a political party with the same name. In April 2019, Zelenskyy won the presidency with 73 percent of the vote in the runoff, having never held political office.

He was born on January 25, 1978, in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in central Ukraine. Astro-Databank gives his birth time as two in the afternoon, with an A rating. His Sun is in Aquarius, the sign of the outsider, the reformer and the cause larger than oneself, and it falls in his ninth house alongside Venus, also in Aquarius. The ninth house concerns ideals, beliefs and the wider world. An Aquarius Sun there describes someone whose identity becomes bound up with a principle, and who speaks to the wider world about it.

Gemini is his rising sign, and Jupiter, retrograde in Gemini, sits in the first house. Gemini is the sign of the communicator, quick-witted, verbal and endlessly adaptable, and Jupiter magnifies it. Zelenskyy's first career was in comedy. He came up through KVN, a televised competition between comedy teams, co-founded the production company Kvartal 95, won Ukraine's version of Dancing with the Stars in 2006 and voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dubs of the films.

His Moon is in Leo, with Mars, also in Leo and retrograde, in the third house of communication and everyday speech. Leo is courageous, theatrical and proud. A Leo Moon with Mars in the third house describes emotion expressed through bold, direct communication, and that is how the world came to know him in 2022.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many expected the government in Kyiv to fall within days. Zelenskyy stayed in the capital. The next evening he recorded a short video on the street outside the presidential office with his senior officials: "We are all here." His nightly video addresses, filmed on a phone in a green army T-shirt, became a central part of Ukraine's defense, and he addressed parliaments around the world by video link. Time named him Person of the Year for 2022.

Saturn, retrograde in Leo, falls in his fourth house, which governs home, homeland and roots. Saturn there is associated with heavy responsibility for one's origins. Zelenskyy grew up in a Russian-speaking Jewish family; his grandfather fought in the Red Army during the Second World War, and other relatives were killed in the Holocaust.

He studied law but never practiced. He married Olena Kiyashko, a schoolmate from Kryvyi Rih, in 2003, and they have two children. Under martial law, the presidential election due in 2024 was postponed. The comedian who once played a president on television found himself a wartime leader, and the Aquarian cause became the survival of his country.