The incumbent, Petro Poroshenko conceded defeat on Sunday evening before results started coming in.

According to official results released on Monday morning, with 85% of the vote counted, 41-year-old Zelenskiy had won 73.4% of the vote, compared to Poroshenko’s 24.4%.

“I’m leaving office, but I want to make it clear that I’m not leaving politics,” said Poroshenko, acknowledging his failure to win a second term. “I will accept the will of the Ukrainian people,” he wrote on Twitter.

Zelenskiy appeared in front of a crowd of journalists at his campaign headquarters as the polls closed and flashed an impish grin as he pushed his way on to the stage, accompanied by the theme tune to his television show.

“We did it together,” he said, thanking his wife, parents and campaign team. “Thanks to all the Ukrainian citizens who voted for me, and to all who didn’t. I promise I won’t mess up.”

The humiliating scale of the defeat for Poroshenko matched a series of polls over past weeks that have suggested Zelenskiy would win the runoff with ease.

The Zelenskiy camp said he had taken phone calls of congratulation from US president Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron, among others.

Zelenskiy will take charge of a country facing numerous challenges, including a struggling economy and an ongoing war against Russia-backed separatist forces in the east that has claimed more than 13,000 lives.

He is best known for his role in the long-running Ukrainian television series Servant of the People, where he played a teacher unexpectedly elected to the presidency after an angry rant about corruption is posted online by his students.

During the campaign, he offered little information about his policies or plans for the presidency, relying on viral videos, standup comedy gigs and jokes in place of traditional campaigning.

His campaign blurred the lines between the real-life Zelenskiy and his on-screen persona. Like the fictional president of his television series, Zelenskiy has promised to clean up politics and end the stranglehold of the oligarchy over Ukraine, but he has offered little by way of specifics.

Concerns have been raised about his close links to the controversial oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. He issued a denial after Poroshenko dubbed him a “Kolomoyskyi puppet” – although many members of Zelenskiy’s campaign team also have links to the oligarch.

Journalists were offered free-flowing wine, a table tennis tournament and pumping music on Sunday evening at Zelenskiy’s campaign headquarters at a nightclub in an upmarket Kyiv business centre. However, there were no further details about his policies in his brief victory speech.

Zelenskiy has benefitted from voter dissatisfaction with Poroshenko, who came to office five years ago after the Maidan revolution. The billionaire confectionary magnate promised Ukrainians they would “live in a new way”, but the pace of change has been too slow for many.

The two candidates faced off in a chaotic televised debate at Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium on Friday evening, but the spectacle did not appear to change many minds. Poroshenko’s supporters tended to be worried about Zelenskiy’s lack of experience and potentially more amenable attitude towards Russia, while backers of Zelenskiy insisted that Poroshenko’s first term had been a failure and that he did not deserve another chance.

Voting on Sunday took place across the country, from the Carpathian mountains in the west to the war-torn Donbass region in the east, where soldiers on the frontline had an opportunity to cast their ballots.

“My nephew has been on the frontline in Donbass; what kind of country would put a clown in charge of its armed forces during a war?” asked Tetiana Hrytsenko, 61, who cast her ballot for Poroshenko on Sunday morning in Kyiv. A group of young people emerging from the same polling station said they had all voted for Zelenskiy.

There was little enthusiasm on display for either candidate, with most voters opting for the candidate they considered the least-worst option.

“It’s like when you go to a cheap supermarket and all of the fruit is rotten, and you rummage around to find the least rotten piece,” said Anna, 32, an office manager who said she had waited hours in line to register for voting papers. On Sunday morning, she had still not decided which candidate she would vote for.

After voting in Kyiv, Zelenskiy was admonished by police for showing his ballot paper to the cameras. Displaying the ballot is illegal under Ukrainian law, and he now faces a fine of up to £24.

The chaotic but lively campaign in Ukraine has been watched closely in neighbouring Russia. While Russian state television has mocked the circus-like aspect of the vote, many have also looked on enviously at the lively debate and competitive atmosphere. On Sunday evening, Zelenskiy’s declaration of victory carried a message that could reverberate in the Kremlin.

“As a citizen of Ukraine I can say to all post-Soviet countries: ‘Look at us. Everything is possible’,” he said.

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The president told national television on Tuesday: “I don’t want anyone to think this is fun and games. Ukraine is under threat of full-scale war with Russia.”

The number of Russian units deployed along the Ukraine-Russian border had “grown dramatically” and the number of Russian tanks had tripled, Poroshenko said, citing intelligence reports but giving no precise timescale for the buildup.

The diplomatic fallout continued, with US President Donald Trump warning he might cancel a long-awaited meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires this week. He told the Washington Post it would depend on the results of a report about the incident.

“Maybe I won’t have the meeting,” he said, The Guardian reported.

Meanwhile, a court in Crimea has ordered the Ukrainian sailors captured by Russia at the weekend to be detained for two months.

Twelve of the 24 sailors being held by Moscow were ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for two months by a court in the city of Simferopol in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. More are to appear before the court on Wednesday.

The sailors face a charge of illegally crossing Russian borders, which carries a sentence of up to six years in prison, according to an investigator quoted by Russian news agencies.

Russian border forces fired on and seized three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch strait, which separates Crimea from the Russian mainland, on Sunday. At least three sailors were wounded. Ukraine says they were travelling in shared waters on a routine passage to the Sea of Azov, which they have a right to patrol under a bilateral treaty.

The crisis between the two countries has provoked international condemnation and talk of fresh western sanctions against Moscow.

Russian state television broadcast interrogations with three of the sailors on Tuesday, eliciting confessions that appeared to be made under duress. “I recognize that the actions of the ships with military hardware of Ukraine’s navy had a provocative character,” said one of the sailors, who identified himself as Vladimir Lisov. “I was carrying out an order.”

Kiev denounced what it described as forced confessions. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, told the Associated Press that he had asked the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross to arrange a visit to the prisoners and that he was waiting for a Russian response. “It’s not a political issue here, because we can have an argument about the legal status, but it’s about simply concentrating on protecting them and helping them,” he said.

On Monday evening, the Ukrainian government declared martial law in some border regions and the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said there was an “extremely serious” threat of a Russian land invasion.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Tuesday that the incident might trigger a flare-up in hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has been building up its naval presence and seeking to restrict Ukrainian access since completing a bridge across the strait in May. The Ukrainian government released video footage of one of its ships being rammed by a Russian vessel. On Tuesday, two Russian police officers with automatic rifles stood on the pier where the Ukrainian vessels were moored in Kerch, Reuters reported. The vessels bore traces of collisions, with big holes in their hulls.

Ukraine’s state security service said its intelligence officers were among the crew and they were fulfilling counter-intelligence operations for the Ukrainian navy in response to “psychological and physical pressure” from Russian spy services. It did not elaborate, but demanded that Russia stop such activity. Russia’s FSB intelligence agency said on Monday that the presence of intelligence officers on board the Ukrainian ships, was a “provocation” staged by Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014 but the hostilities have largely subsided since a truce was signed in 2015.

Senior politicians from Germany, Austria, Poland and Estonia raised the possibility of new EU sanctions against Russia to punish it for the Kerch incident, which the west fears could ignite a wider conflict.

The United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, had urged Russia and Ukraine to use “maximum restraint” and avoid further escalation, his spokesman said in a statement.

Guterres said he was “greatly concerned” about the incident and called on “both parties to exercise maximum restraint and to take steps without delay to contain this incident and reduce tensions”.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke to Putin on Monday and stressed the need for de-escalation and dialogue, her spokesman said.

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