Ukraine: rock star ready for coalition talks with comedian turned president | News from the world

As if a comedian became president, that was not enough, Ukraine now has a rock star as a potential political kingmaker.

Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the singer of the 44-year-old rock band Okean Elzy, is expected to enter the Ukrainian parliament after polls show that his newly-created party, the Golos (Voice), won 6% of the vote during Sunday's parliamentary vote.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the star of the sitcom who shocked his country by winning the presidency in April, immediately declared that he was ready to start talks with Vakarchuk on forming a government coalition. Polls out of the polls showed it far ahead of all other parties, even though they may not have the majority.

The rocker circled his party's electoral list with young professionals, mostly trained in the West, and banned current and former lawmakers from joining the party.

"People have voted for change and we are happy to be part of it," Vakarchuk told enthusiastic supporters at the Golos party headquarters after the election results were released. "We are ready to badume our responsibilities."

The singer has not stopped performing during the campaign, making concerts an essential part of party tours across the country.

And although he only created Golos two months before the vote, Vakarchuk has long considered a career in politics. The singer was a supporter of the pro-Western Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004 and joined the then President's bloc, Viktor Yushchenko.

He won a seat in parliament in 2007, but quickly became disillusioned with politics and gave up his seat after barely a year.

In 2014, he pbadionately supported the Maidan revolution, which ended up overthrowing a pro-Moscow leader, with one of his concerts supporting protesters gathered to more than 100,000 people.

He said that he wanted Ukraine to join the European Union and NATO.

Vakarchuk was born in Mukachevo, a town close to the Hungarian border. He followed in the footsteps of his father, former Minister of Education, and trained as a physicist in Lviv, near the Polish border.

While pursuing an impressive musical career during which he produced nine albums, Vakarchuk also studied for a doctorate in physics.

In 2015, he participated in an international scholarship program at Yale University and, in 2018, he joined Stanford University as a visiting scholar.