Forty-one-year-old comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy won Ukraine's presidential election on Sunday, defeating incumbent Petro Poroshenko in a landslide victory.

(SOUNDBITE) (Ukrainian) UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AND COMEDIAN, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKIY, SAYING: "We did it together.

(SUPPORTERS CHEERING) Thanks to everyone!

Now there will be no pathetic speeches, I just want to say - thank you." The national exit poll showed Zelenskiy had won 73 percent of the vote with Poroshenko winning just 25 percent.

Zelenskiy, who played a fictitious president in the popular Ukrainian TV series "Servant of the People," had no political experience entering the presidential race.

He has few detailed policies and will take over the leadership of a country at war with Russia.

Poroshenko, who was hoping for a second 5-year term, tried to cast himself as a bulwark against Russian aggression.

But, in the end, he was trounced by the political neophyte and conceded on Sunday.

Zelenskiy's rise fits a pattern of political insurgency across many parts of the world.

From the election of President Donald Trump in the United States, to Brexit, to the Five Star Movement in Italy that was also propelled by a comedian.

Fed up with corruption, voters in Ukraine are hungry for change.

Zelenskiy has pledged to keep Ukraine on a pro-Western course and has also assured investors - without offering concrete plans - that he would push reforms, tackle corruption and keep the economy anchored to an International Monetary Fund loan program.

In his new role, Zelenskiy also finds himself on the frontlines of the West's standoff with Russia following Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has killed some 13,000 people.