His arrival at the polling station on Sunday (April 21) was a bit like a rock star's.

Ukranian comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy already plays a fictitious president in a popular TV show - and very soon, that could become a reality.

Recent polls show that Zelenskiy is set to win Ukraine's presidency.

In last month's first round of the election, he won nearly twice as many votes as the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko.

At stake is the leadership of a country on the frontline of the West's standoff with Russia following the 2014 Maidan street protests and the annexation of Crimea.

Poroshenko has seen his popularity slide after patchy efforts to tackle corruption and sliding living standards.

Both men - who traded insults and accusations in a heated debate in a soccer stadium in Kiev on Friday - have pledged to keep Ukraine on a pro-Western course.

But, fed up with corruption - voters in Ukraine are hungry for change.

However, Poroshenko maintains that the TV personality is just a buffoonish populist, whose victory would push Ukraine back into Russia's orbit.

A Zelenskiy victory would be a dramatic departure in a country where previous presidential elections since independence were won by experienced politicians.