KIEV, Ukraine — A young television comic and novice candidate trounced Ukraine’s political elite in the first round of the presidential election, official results showed Monday — a stinging rebuke by an electorate tired of the lack of change in a country dominated by rich businessmen.

Results released by the Central Electoral Committee showed that Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, who is famous for playing a schoolteacher accidentally vaulted into the presidency, leading the field with more than 30 percent. He received 5.2 million votes, almost double the number of his nearest competitor, President Petro O. Poroshenko, who had just under 16 percent.

Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who has run for president twice before, came in third with more than 13 percent. The turnout was more than 63 percent in an electorate of 30 million, the electoral commission said.

Since no candidate garnered more than 50 percent of the vote, Mr. Zelensky and the apparent second-place finisher, Mr. Poroshenko, will face each other in a runoff in three weeks, on April 21.

As soon as the polls closed on Sunday and exit polls indicated that there would be a runoff, the two leading candidates began bashing each other.

Mr. Zelensky presented himself as an insurgent facing a tired old guard that had refused to take him seriously. He walloped a field of 38 other candidates representing different political blocs in Ukraine, most of whom attracted only small fractions of the vote.

A Zelensky adviser described the outcome as the culmination of a series of uprisings in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014 that succeeded in overthrowing governments but failed to break the grip of the oligarchs who control economic and political life, as well as the media.

“This is a struggle so that the political system finally starts working not for its own benefit, but for the benefit of the people,” said Dmitri Razumkov, a political consultant for Mr. Zelensky. “Despite two revolutions, nothing has changed in our country.”

Mr. Zelensky has been vague about what he would do as president, and at one point tried to crowdsource his program by suggesting that supporters contribute thoughts via social media. Voters might demand more in the second round.

There have also been suspicions that he is a front for Ihor V. Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian tycoon who fled to Israel amid a banking scandal. Both men have denied any secret pact.

Mr. Poroshenko, 53, conceded on Sunday night that he had lost the confidence of young voters weary over the slow pace of change and the continuing economic woes. But he said that the time for joking was over and that Ukraine needed a leader who could confront both its socioeconomic problems and, more important, the conflict with Russia.

The election will help determine the course of the country that has become the European fault line in renewed global tensions between Russia and the West. The war for control of the Donbass, the regions in eastern Ukraine where government forces are fighting Russian-backed separatists, has claimed 13,000 lives and displaced millions since 2014.

In a sign of the deep rift with Russia, the main rivalry in the presidential race was not, unlike a decade ago, between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions. The leading ally of Russia this time, Yuriy Boyko, was in fourth place, with over 11 percent of the vote.

Mr. Poroshenko faces an uphill battle in a runoff, political analysts said, not least because he remains one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine. His wealth comes from his chocolate empire, and he did not fulfill a 2014 campaign promise to sell his business. Various businessmen close to him have been caught up in scandals involving corruption.

The president continued to grow richer as ordinary Ukrainians suffered from low wages and unemployment, noted Volodymr Fesenko, a political analyst.

The election outcome echoes a global trend of tossing out established political leaders in favor of candidates who promise a complete national overhaul, Mr. Fesenko and other analysts said.

“The victory of Zelensky is a protest against the old elites and the request for radical political change, a radical update,” said Mr. Fesenko, chairman of a think tank called the Center for Applied Political Studies. It is not so much love for the comedian as “the expectation that he can become a catalyst for change,” he said.

Ukrainians seem less enamored of their leaders all the time. A mere 9 percent voiced confidence in the government, and 91 percent see it as corrupt, according to a Gallup poll conducted in March.

In Russia, Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, declined to comment on the first-round voting results. Russia’s main interest is seeing a candidate prevail who will work toward a gradual settlement of the conflict in Donbass, he said.

Other Russian political leaders and the state-run media tried to present the Ukrainian election as a farce and a rebuke to the idea that a political uprising like that in Ukraine in 2014 could force change. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the government newspaper, said there were signs of “massive violations and falsifications in these elections — the dirtiest and most dishonest in the history of Ukraine.”

The Russian reports and commentary ignored the widespread perception that the election in Ukraine was democratic, with a real choice and an outcome that was not preordained — unlike elections in Russia. Only minor election law violations have been reported thus far.

Iuliia Mendel reported from Kiev and Neil MacFarquhar reported from Moscow

Andrew Kramer contributed reporting in Moscow

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