But Peter Singer, a professor at Arizona State University’s Center for Future War Studies, said Mr. Fedorov was “incredibly effective” at urging companies to rethink their ties to Russia.
“No celebrity, let alone nation, has ever been more effective than Ukraine in urging corporate brands to name and shame them into acting morally,” Mr. Singer said. “If there is such a thing as ‘cancellation of culture’, Ukrainians can claim to have honed it in the war.”
In a 45-minute Zoom interview, Mr. Fedorov, dressed in loose gray fleece with black zippers, sat in front of a wood-paneled wall. He says he sleeps about three to four hours a night, often interrupted about every 30 minutes by alerts on the iPhone he keeps next to his bed. He said he was worried about his father, who had been in intensive care for the past week after a rocket hit a neighbor’s house.
“I have come into contact with horror,” he said. “The war knocked on my door personally.”
Mr. Fedorov grew up in the small town of Vasylivka in southern Ukraine near the Dnieper. Before entering politics, he founded a digital marketing company called SMMSTUDIO, which developed online advertising campaigns.
The job led him to work in 2018 for Mr. Zelenskiy, at the time an actor who was unexpectedly running for the presidency of Ukraine. Mr. Fedorov became director of a digital campaign, using social media to portray Mr. Zelenskiy as a youthful symbol of change.
Updated
March 12, 2022 7:41 AM ET
After Mr. Zelensky was elected in 2019, he appointed Mr. Fedorov, then 28, as Minister of Digital Transformation, tasking him with the digitization of Ukrainian social services. Through a government app, people could pay speeding tickets or manage their taxes. Last year, Mr. Fedorov visited Silicon Valley to meet with executives, including Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive.