He was a good student. In Ukraine’s first years as an independent nation he earned a place studying law at Kryvyi Rih Economic Institute, the local campus of Kyiv National Economic University. But it was his talent as a performer that was clear to fellow high school student Irina Shport, who starred alongside Vova in a production of Marriage by Nikolai Gogol – a play about a botched matchmaking. Among a high-calibre cohort, “he was always No. 1”, she says. One of the few creative outlets in Soviet times was the live television comedy KVN (Klub vesyólykh i nakhódchivykh or...