The debate, held in a hulking football stadium, was one of the last opportunities for incumbent President Petro Poroshenko to try to overhaul a significant lead in the opinion polls enjoyed by his challenger Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comic. At stake in Sunday’s election is the leadership of a country on the frontline of the West’s standoff with Moscow following 2014 protests that caused Poroshenko’s Kremlin-backed predecessor to flee into exile, and foreshadowed Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Zelenskiy, 41, who plays a fictional president in a popular TV series, tried to cast Poroshenko, 53, as a rich out-of-touch leader who has overseen corruption and failed to end the war.
