Before-and-after photos show the personal toll of Ukraine's war on Zelenskyy since he took office 3 years ago

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office three years ago, on May 20, 2019.
• He was a comedian who ran on an anti-corruption platform and won in a landslide vote.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was inaugurated as Ukraine's president three years ago today. His time in office has changed him completely.

His country is now almost three months into a devastating war after Russia invaded in February this year.

The war made Zelenskyy, 44, a household name around the world and totally changed his image domestically.

It has also changed his appearance and style. Zelensky, once suited and clean-shaven, is now mostly seen in military gear and sports a beard.

The toll of leading a nation suffering massacres and wholesale destruction — while personally avoiding assassination attempts — appears also to have taken a personal toll.

In April, he gave an interview saying that the war had hollowed him out emotionally, and that he no longer had the capacity to cry when confronted with the horrors of the war.

All of this doesn't make one a better person. One doesn't get used to all these victims," Zelenskyy told BILD, a German outlet which shares a parent company with Insider.

It's a far cry from his fame before politics, when he was a comedian and a TV star who played Ukraine's president on a popular TV show.

Zelenskyy won the presidency in the April 2019 election that saw him beat in the incumbent with 73% of the vote.

He ran on an anti-corruption platform, as well as plans for peace talks with Russia, which had by then already taken the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine as well as waging a lower-level war via proxy forces in eastern Ukraine.

As Insider's Talia Lakritz previously reported, presidents often get more grey hairs while they are in office. It's something that some experts say comes from the stress of the job, while others say it's most likely due to ageing in general.