Background
Zaseda was born in a village near Kharkiv, then studied in Mariupol and then moved to Kyiv, where he graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University with a degree in journalism.
Zaseda was born in a village near Kharkiv, then studied in Mariupol and then moved to Kyiv, where he graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University with a degree in journalism.
He competed in the 200 m breaststroke event at the 1956 Summer Olympics and finished in fifth place.
He then worked as a sports commentator for a regional newspaper, and eventually became an established writer and president of the Kyiv Journalist Union. He was the author or co-author of 30 books, including five novels, some of which had been translated into multiple languages. Zaseda was one of the organizers of the masters swimming movement in the Soviet Union, and competed himself since the first national championships in 1989.
He was one of the first journalists to report on the Chernobyl disaster.
While collecting material, he received a high dose of radiation (his car had to be disposed off due to radioactive contamination) that resulted in a prolonged illness and death in 2006.
