Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky lead in Ukraine elections

A comedian with no political experience raced ahead in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday, offering a fresh face to voters fed up with entrenched corruption in a country on the frontline of the West’s standoff with Russia.

With more than 50 percent of votes counted, Ukraine's Central Election Commission showed Volodymyr Zelensky, a political novice who is better known for playing a president in a TV sitcom, had secured 30.2 percent of the votes cast on Sunday.

According to the official early count, only 16.6 percent of votes were cast in favor of Poroshenko, who has been in power since 2014.

A crowded field of 39 candidates has now shrunk to just two, with Zelenskiy and Poroshenko set to go head-to-head in a second round run-off on April 21.

Propelled by his anti-establishment appeal, newcomer Zelenskiy must convince voters he is fit to lead a country that has been at war ever since protests in 2014 ejected a pro-Kremlin government and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Both Zelenskiy and Poroshenko face firmly west, and neither wants to move Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. But investors are also keen to see if the next president would 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. “It is only the beginning, we will not relax.”

Poroshenko called the result a “severe lesson”, especially from younger voters, and urged their support in a 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.

Poroshenko sought to portray Zelenskiy as unfit to represent Ukraine abroad, especially when 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.