Ukraine election: Polls open as TV star set to uproot corrupt elites

Polls have opened in Ukraine as people there choose their next president in a run-off vote.

Petro Poroshenko will have managed to pull off something pretty close to a miracle if he manages to beat his rival Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The latest opinion polls show Zelenskiy streaks ahead - on 72% to Poroshenko's 25%.

At Kiev's Olympic stadium on Friday the two men traded insults to the wild cheers of some 22,000 of their supporters and may have swayed a few undecideds - but the vast majority of Ukrainians seem determined that the old guard must go.

Zelenskiy - an actor and comedian - is trading himself as just your average kind of guy.

That's what the character he plays in his Servant of the People series is - a history teacher who unexpectedly becomes president. But Zelenskiy is not an ordinary guy. He's a TV celebrity.

His runaway electoral success is mostly down, so far, to the fact that he's not Mr Poroshenko.

He is a breath of fresh air in Ukraine's stagnant post-Soviet politics.

After the debate, Zelenskiy supporter Tanya Finayeva broke down in tears when she tried to explain to me what she felt was wrong with her country's politics.

"When you see these people that you know all the time just took money, [who] don't do anything for people, [who] just do everything for themselves, I feel pain and that is why I am crying," she said.

"And I feel that just maybe we will have a chance with him."

Never mind the fact his policy ideas are thin. He's refused to do any but a tiny handful of interviews (the last a deal that if he lost a game of ping pong with a journalist, he'd give them an interview), so it's up to his policy advisers to provide a bit more clarity.

Take ending the war in the east, for example. Zelenskiy has said he wants to start an information war with Russia in Donbass (spoiler: there already is one).

Dmytro Razumkov, who would be in charge of domestic affairs under a Zelenskiy presidency, told me his plan was to bring the US and UK into the Normandy format - the diplomatic squad of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine - which is tasked with resolving the war in eastern Ukraine. It is not much of a brainwave.

But Poroshenko's pitch to the nation as commander in chief - the only man tough enough to take on Vladimir Putin - was ill-judged.

It was not what people wanted to hear. As awful as the ongoing, grinding war in the east is, and as much of a concern as it still is, Ukrainians are bored of the talk of war defining their day-to-day lives.

A Poroshenko supporter leaving the stadium last night told me Zelenskiy was a joke.

It wasn't a riff on his comedian status, it was said with utter scorn.

But despite Poroshenko putting on a performance worthy of his showman rival, it looks very much as though come Sunday night he will have to gracefully bow out.

Zelenskiy's political career has come from nowhere.

Running a country is a serious business, but how refreshing it would be if fresh young blood really could uproot the corrupt elites which characterise post-Soviet states.

If that happens, you can be sure that Putin will be watching and that he'll be worried.

Power to the people is not a message he likes.