Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy was born to Jewish parents on 25 January 1978 in
Kryvyi Rih, then in the
Ukrainian SSR.
[12][13][14][15] His father,
Oleksandr Zelenskyy, is a professor and head of Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at the
Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, used to work as an engineer.
[16][17][18] His grandfather, Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelenskyy, served in the
Red Army (in the
57th Guards Motor Rifle Division)
[19] during
World War II; Semyon's father and three brothers were killed in
the Holocaust.
[20] Prior to starting elementary school, Zelenskyy lived for four years in the Mongolian city of
Erdenet, where his father worked.
[13] At the age of 16, he passed the
Test of English as a Foreign Language and received an education grant to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to go.
[21] He later earned a law degree from the
Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then a department of
Kyiv National Economic University and now part of
Kryvyi Rih National University, but did not go on to work in the legal field.
[13][22]