American readers won’t be too surprised by a tale of an inexperienced candidate winning against the establishment’s pick. But in the case of Ukraine’s new leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, this widely made comparison is even something of understatement. Imagine that Donald Trump was thirty years younger and had never written any books or participated in any (even allegedly) serious debates. There were no primaries and no GOP to take over. And Zelenskiy is a professional comedian.

But the comparisons with Trump have their limits. Zelenskiy, the son of a university professor and an engineer, is no working-class hero, but nor is he an oligarch like outgoing president (and defeated second-round candidate) Petro Poroshenko, who made his fortune privatizing Soviet confectionary factories in the wild 1990s. This latter’s aggressive nationalist campaign had far more in common with right-wing populists abroad, especially those in neighboring countries like Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán or de facto Polish leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

Poroshenko’s main slogan was “Army. Language. Faith.” and he raised the nationalist rallying cry “Either me, or Putin.” In Sunday’s second-round contest, a usually polarized society rallied in great numbers — 73 percent — against the incumbent. Zelenskiy won because he rode the wave of everything the unpopular incumbent symbolized, indeed for various different kinds of voters. For them, Poroshenko meant poverty, unashamed corruption, the unending war in Donbass, and aggressive nationalist initiatives in policies stretching from religion to language and public history. During preelection debates at Ukraine’s largest stadium, Zelenskiy literally called himself “the result of your [Poroshenko’s] mistakes.”