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#62188986 · 24 Jul 2025, 11:23 · · პროფილი · პირადი მიმოწერა · ჩატი
მოვაკოპირე სრული სტატია ერმაკზე. FT-ზე ფასიანია.
On the biting morning of December 1 2023, just beyond the eastern edge of Kyiv, Boryspil International Airport stirred from a long wartime slumber. Terminal D, once a hub for holidaymakers and business travellers, had been silent since the first Russian missiles attacked Ukraine in the opening hours of the full-scale invasion nearly two years earlier. But as snow blanketed the empty tarmac and frosted the rusting tank traps guarding its perimeter, a convoy of blacked-out SUVs carrying some 80 foreign ambassadors, government ministers and heads of international aid organisations slipped through the barricades.
Inside the terminal, espresso machines hissed and kiosks brimmed with fresh pastries. Departure boards blinked back to life with the names of places Ukraine aspired to connect with once again: Berlin, London, New York, Tel Aviv. Uniformed flight attendants issued guests glossy fake boarding passes for a hopeful destination: Ukraine’s Peace Formula.
The message was clear. This wasn’t merely a summit, it was a statement that the bloodiest armed conflict on European soil since the second world war would not end in the trenches of the Donbas region or at negotiating tables where foreign leaders carved up the country. Ukraine’s future would be plotted from Kyiv. Staged weeks after a much-hyped battlefield campaign failed to break through Russian defences this was a counteroffensive by other means.
The attendees settled at a giant roundtable assembled in the centre of the terminal. Among them was the Ukrainian Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, several government ministers and deputy heads of the presidential office. There were ambassadors to the US, France and Italy. Richard Branson appeared via video link from his Australian vacation suite, his voice nearly drowned out by the sound of a waterfall.
After opening greetings, there followed a long wait. Twenty minutes. Thirty. Almost 40 minutes had passed when all eyes turned to the main entrance. Many expected Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to strut in with the wartime swagger for which he has become famous. Instead, in came a heavier-footed figure, who had orchestrated the day’s proceedings. Andriy Yermak, a former film producer and now Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, was not merely the host of the ambitious event. Every scene, symbol and line of the peace formula bore his imprint. From this frozen outpost, Yermak was attempting to direct the country’s path forward again.
The world knows Zelenskyy as the comedian-turned-wartime-president who has become one of the most recognised political figures of the 21st century, drawing comparisons to Winston Churchill. He’s the leader who stood his ground in Kyiv as Russian troops stormed over the border and assassins hunted him down. Two words from his famous video message on the first night of the invasion, filmed defiantly in the dark outside the presidential compound, have become a national rallying cry: “My tut” (“We’re here”).
The burly man standing at Zelenskyy’s left shoulder in that video is not a household name, although he appears in countless images, almost always within arm’s length of the president. In a photo taken at a peace summit in Switzerland in June 2024, he stands front and centre, towering over the dozens of world leaders in attendance, and all but obscuring US vice-president Kamala Harris, who cranes her head to be seen. (“I don’t know how the fuck he did that and how we let that happen,” one US official said of the photo.) But among Ukrainians, foreign leaders and diplomats, he is a person of immense and polarising influence.
Andriy Yermak is not Ukraine’s president. But he often acts like one. As the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine — his official title — Yermak, 53, drafts peace plans, directs back-channel diplomacy and handpicks government officials. The prime minister and top military brass frequently defer to him. When it comes to high-stakes negotiations — prisoner swaps with Moscow; the return of abducted Ukrainian children; deals to keep grain flowing through the Black Sea — Yermak runs the show. European governments co-ordinate with him on military and financial aid. He’s on first-name terms with global power brokers and Hollywood stars.
Inside the gilded halls of Kyiv’s presidential compound, Yermak oversees a tight-knit team of around two dozen personally selected, devout advisers who enjoy access to national security briefings and meetings with visiting heads of state, an arrangement considered highly unorthodox by most western governments’ standards. Together, this group manages the country. Yermak’s own role has been described in myriad ways by those who’ve observed him — from Zelenskyy’s right-hand man to Ukraine’s de facto vice-president. But, his allies and critics agree, almost nothing happens in Ukraine without his knowledge and approval. Nobody gets to the president without going through him.
To staunch supporters such as Andriy Sybiha, Yermak’s former deputy who has served as Ukraine’s foreign minister since September, Yermak is “a great manager. Especially in crisis situations.” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark and Nato secretary-general, who wrote the supporting text for Yermak’s entry in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2024, said he had witnessed Yermak’s ability to keep “government running . . . first-hand during our work on security guarantees for Ukraine” leading to “a web of bilateral agreements with allies”.
But his judgment has been called into question by many observers, including those close to him. It was Yermak who, against the advice of US and Ukrainian officials, pushed for an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump in February, as Kyiv sought American backing and a minerals deal. The fiasco that followed nearly upended relations between the two countries, and was seen as evidence of Yermak’s overconfidence. “His problem is micromanagement. He tries to be everywhere and to do everything,” said Alexander Rodnyansky, a Ukrainian TV executive and old friend of Yermak’s.
Yermak has come to personify a debate roiling the country, over whether centralised powers imposed by the wartime administration might cripple Ukraine’s democratic future once the war ends. For many Ukrainians, he is a symbol of an old order they are desperate to leave behind. This week, Zelenskyy faced the most serious domestic challenge of his presidency, after a sweeping move to sideline Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bodies sparked the first major mass protests since the start of the war. There were chants of “Yermak out” and “Fuck Yermak” among the crowds of thousands gathered in Kyiv.
In interviews with more than 40 people, including current and former Ukrainian officials, western diplomats in Kyiv and officials from European governments and Washington who have dealt directly with Yermak, I was frequently told that he wields as much influence as Zelenskyy, perhaps more. To detractors, Yermak is an unelected tsar amassing boundless power — eroding the democratic checks and balances that Kyiv has implemented since its Euromaidan revolution in 2014. He draws up lists of domestic political enemies for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council to sanction. He has been accused of manipulating judicial investigations to discredit his rivals and stalling anti-corruption inquiries. He is said to orchestrate black ops, spreading leaks and rumours via anonymous channels on Telegram. “His aim is to centralise everything in a post-Soviet style of rule that resembles something not so different from autocracy,” said one person who worked closely with Yermak in the president’s office.
Last week, one of Yermak’s close allies, Yulia Svyrydenko, was appointed Ukraine’s new prime minister — a move widely reported as evidence of his growing hold over Zelenskyy. A western ambassador described Yermak’s role bluntly: “He’s the president, the prime minister, the foreign minister . . . all the ministers put together.” One Ukrainian minister warned me that few inside the government would dare talk about Yermak on the record — a prediction that turned out to be true.
“Everyone’s future and fortunes,” he said, “are determined by Andriy Yermak.”
Yermak’s allies argue that he is not a “grey cardinal” lurking and shaping policy in the shadows, but something new in Ukraine’s post-Soviet political world: a “green cardinal”, commanding private and public stages in his olive combat fatigues.
Yet he did not come up through politics or the military. He wasn’t part of Zelenskyy’s entourage of childhood friends or a co-star in his Kvartal 95 comedy troupe. Born in Soviet Kyiv in 1971, Yermak enjoyed many of the privileges of the USSR’s middle-class intelligentsia. His father, Boris, worked in the renowned Artem defence manufacturing plant before becoming a high-ranking diplomat at the Soviet embassy in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war. That assignment has led to speculation that his role involved ties to Soviet security services. When I raised these rumours with Yermak, he dismissed them curtly: “Where is the evidence?”
As a young man, Yermak dreamt of becoming a jet fighter pilot. Instead, he entered Taras Shevchenko National University, graduating with a master’s degree in international law. While many of his classmates went on to study in the west and join top European law firms, Yermak stayed in Kyiv and opened his own practice, focusing on intellectual property law. “I liked him because he looked like very few guys in Kyiv of that time,” said Rodnyansky. “He spoke foreign languages.”
It was when Yermak took his legal services to the Inter TV channel in 2011 that he met a young Volodymyr Zelenskyy, already a national star and general producer at the channel. Their first conversation didn’t last long but they clicked right away. “I could tell he was a very smart, very intelligent person,” Yermak recalled. “I liked the way he spoke about his wife, his children.” Yermak moved into the entertainment business soon afterwards. He founded a media group and produced several B movies that received tepid reviews, including a 2017 boxing drama, The Fight Rules.
Planetary’ is how one western diplomat described his ego
In early 2019, he took a step into politics, joining Zelenskyy’s presidential campaign. When Zelenskyy won the election, he appointed Yermak to be his top aide on international affairs. Even those close to the new president were surprised. Zelenskyy’s team was mostly composed of friends he’d known since his school days in the gritty industrial city of Kryvyi Rih. But, together, the two men began working towards some of Zelenskyy’s most ambitious promises, including ending the war that had been simmering in eastern Ukraine since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
In a first test of his political acumen, that summer Yermak became the main point of contact between Kyiv and US president Donald Trump’s circle, as American officials pressured Ukraine to open investigations into alleged corruption by Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Acting as backchannel to Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Yermak discussed a possible statement of co-operation — a condition for a White House meeting and the release of $400mn in US military aid. The negotiation led to Trump’s infamous “do us a favour” call. Some in Kyiv blamed Yermak for drawing Ukraine into the scandal, but Zelenskyy credited him with shielding him from deeper fallout. The episode marked the start of Yermak’s evolution into the president’s top fixer.
Yermak’s greatest coup of the summer of 2019 was the negotiation of a prisoner swap with Moscow, securing the return of acclaimed filmmaker Oleh Sentsov and 34 others. He flew to Moscow to collect the prisoners in person — a moment he later reflected on with a mix of pride and grievance. “No photo of me at all,” he told me. He was wrong. One image did appear, on his own Facebook page, of him looming over Zelenskyy’s shoulder. None of the freed Ukrainians is in the frame. “I’m not thinking that I’m some hero,” Yermak said. “I’m just . . . look, I think that I am doing what I have to do.” By early 2020, Zelenskyy had sacked his chief of staff and appointed Yermak in his place.
The bond between Zelenskyy and Yermak was truly forged in the crucible of war. Since February 24 2022, when Putin’s forces crossed the Ukrainian border, the two have been inseparable. They live and work inside the presidential compound, a baroque Cossack building that housed the central committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine until independence from the Soviet Union came in 1991. The building, with its opulent crystal chandeliers, parquet floors and green marble columns, is an odd backdrop for the sandbags now piled in front of its fortified windows and along corridors.
Yermak’s office is two floors below Zelenskyy’s. There, he works at a sprawling desk surrounded by gifts from foreign dignitaries and Ukrainian soldiers, including a ceramic skull painted with the image of the Kremlin in flames. Yermak, who is unmarried and has no children, has wholly dedicated himself to his work. His old apartment sits largely unused and he rarely visits his parents, who remain in Kyiv. “He can go 24 hours straight working, no exaggeration,” said Sybiha, the foreign minister. “It’s not just his ambition. It’s his operating system.”
The relationship between the two men goes beyond work, their aides and allies say. “He is the president’s closest soratnik,” Sybiha said. The word translates to something like comrade, or brother-in-arms. They sleep near each other in the building’s bunker, shielded from the Russian air strikes that have intensified since Spring this year. There, after a long work day, they may unwind by playing table tennis or watching classic films they know so well they can recite the lines. Most mornings begin with a workout, the two side by side, lifting weights. “He loves to look like a good-looking man,” said Rodnyansky, Yermak’s film producer friend. “Both of them work out hard.”
In the early days of the invasion, Yermak and Zelenskyy kept assault rifles close at hand in case Russian forces breached the compound. As one aide recalled, the rifles were there either to fight their way out or to ensure a dignified end, rather than be captured. “I wasn’t scared,” Yermak told me. “I have thought about this moment . . . but I didn’t worry about myself. I was fearful for my family and the Ukrainian people.”
When the Kremlin called Kyiv in the early hours of their full-scale invasion to press them to concede defeat, it was Yermak’s phone that rang. On the line was Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak. He told Yermak to convince Zelenskyy to surrender or be prepared to face the full might of the Russian army. “Fuck you!” Yermak replied, hanging up.
According to two Ukrainian officials involved in military planning, Yermak has overruled military leadership on several occasions and in certain situations had “full influence” over battlefield operations. One of the most glaring examples, they said, was his influence over the battle of Bakhmut.
Bakhmut was erected as a fortress settlement in 1571, when Ivan the Terrible ordered a defence of Russia’s southern frontier. It was never meant to revert to its original purpose, but by late 2022, it was under siege once more as Russian forces closed in. Many of Ukraine’s frontline commanders urged a strategic retreat, but Yermak saw an opportunity to tell a different story. With its history, Bakhmut fortress carried a certain raw narrative power. It would become a symbol of Ukraine’s unbreakable resistance. Zelenskyy, too, wanted a major battlefield victory to lift national morale. Bakhmut wouldn’t fall; it couldn’t.
But Bakhmut was already hell after seven months of fierce fighting. When I reported from the city in early December 2022, the centre was devastated. The Russian ground assaults were relentless — even hardened American generals were astonished at the fight’s brutality and Moscow’s staggering losses. And yet, they kept on coming.
At the height of the battle, on December 20, Zelenskyy, with Yermak by his side, made a secret and risky visit to the Bakhmut frontline. The next day Zelenskyy flew to the US and presented a joint session of Congress with a tattered Ukrainian flag signed by the troops in Bakhmut. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held it over the dais to a standing ovation. Ukraine had its Alamo.
Behind the scenes, western officials were alarmed by the casualties. Ukrainian commanders complained resources were being wasted for little tactical return. Many said the decision to stay had been made inside the president’s circle, not by the military. “A political manoeuvre disguised as heroism,” was how one commander in the fight described it to me.
In the end Bakhmut fortress fell. The toll would undermine Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, which also ended in failure. “It was a mistake to stay in Bakhmut so long,” said a senior Ukrainian official involved with military planning. “We had our orders.” I asked from whom, and he named Ukraine’s ground forces commander. But that general had been given his own order, the official added. It had come from the president’s office. “You can guess who.”
At 6ft 2in with a sturdy frame, Yermak cuts an imposing figure, but not a rough one. His hands are well-manicured and his soft, oval face is framed by carefully maintained stubble. Leather bands and bracelets of wooden beads are stacked on his left wrist. “They are a type of talisman,” he told me, rubbing the beads between his fingers. We were speaking in a flashy room down the hall from his office. Illuminated by neon lights, it looked more like a film studio than a work space. It was one of three exclusive interviews we had over the space of two years. Yermak did not respond to subsequent requests for comment for this story.
Publicly, Yermak speaks with a measured, almost monotone voice, slightly higher pitched than one might expect from a man of his stature. He talks at such great length that his meaning often gets lost. “At first I thought it was a tactic used to tire us out and make us less interested in pursuing interviews with him,” said a Ukrainian journalist who didn’t want to be identified. “But now I realise he just talks and talks.”
A bigger critic of me than myself does not exist
Andriy Yermak
Privately, Yermak can be pointed. “He’s sometimes brutal,” the foreign minister Sybiha admitted. Asked for examples, he offered only a sly grin: “Please, ask some other officials.” I asked several, of various ranks, who have worked with Yermak in different capacities, but most declined to speak under any circumstances. “Career suicide,” said one. “No, sorry,” another replied. “I would like to keep my job.” One close adviser described Yermak as “tough but effective”. Another allowed that he was “ruthless” and “cunning”. He might not be the type of person you want to help lead in peacetime, he added, but this was war. And who else could do what he does for the president?
Zelenskyy did not agree to be interviewed for this story, but the president has fiercely defended his chief of staff, telling a reporter last year that Yermak was “one of the strongest managers” on his team. “I respect him for his results, he does what I tell him.” In one of our interviews, Yermak conceded that he can come down hard on his staff, but shrugged off complaints he could be overbearing. “It’s impossible not to be tough and to get results, you know?” he said. “A bigger critic of me than myself does not exist.”
“I’m the president’s manager,” Yermak continued. “He’s not just the leader of Ukraine today — I believe he’s the leader of the free world. My job is to help make him as effective as possible. The goal is to win this war, reclaim our territories, bring our people back, receive compensation and rebuild our country. That’s my focus. I’m the person who gets results. For me, it’s better to feel that I have really done a very important job . . . ”
Sensing that Yermak was rambling, Daria Zarivna, a 36-year-old former media entrepreneur and his most faithful aide, interjected: “If I may, I’d say Mr Yermak builds and manages operations like a chief operating officer for every key project that the president prioritises.”
In diplomatic circles, Yermak is often the subject of whispered cocktail chatter. Some mock his tendency to name-drop famous actors such as Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, posting birthday wishes to them on social media. But it’s through his celebrity connections that Yermak has mobilised a large group of big names to speak out as “ambassadors” in support of Ukraine, raising money for humanitarian efforts and drones for frontline troops.
Perhaps the most well-rehearsed dig is about the size of his ego. “Planetary,” is how one western ambassador who has dealt with him directly for years described it to me. “Galactic is a better word for it,” countered another envoy. Yermak’s self-importance has led to clashes with several western envoys posted to Kyiv, none more than former US ambassador Bridget Brink, who resigned from her post in April in protest over Trump’s Ukraine policies.
Yermak’s aides blamed Brink for failing to prepare Zelenskyy for a contentious meeting with US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent in Kyiv this February. Bessent had brought with him a document for the Ukrainian leader to sign: the first version of Washington’s proposed minerals deal. It sought 50 per cent of Ukraine’s rare earth and critical mineral rights in exchange for $500bn, a figure for past military aid that Trump had arbitrarily set.
Senior Ukrainians said Bessent pressed Zelenskyy to sign the agreement on the spot, something the president later confirmed to me. “He arrived and said, ‘You must sign this now,’” Zelenskyy said. “I told him: ‘Stop tapping your finger on the document and let’s talk seriously.’” Zelenskyy didn’t feel the document in its first iteration was fair, as “it included provisions contrary to our constitution and laws”.
Yermak’s aides said he often felt that the US embassy under Brink was working against the Ukrainian president’s office by focusing too intensely on the issue of corruption in Ukraine — and the numerous government shake-ups that had consolidated more power into Yermak’s hands — and not enough on securing more military assistance. People close to Brink took issue with that, saying nobody in Kyiv fought harder than she had to secure US aid for its defence.
Ukraine’s relationship with the second Trump administration is a difficult one. Under President Biden, a former US official said, “The guiding policy was to support Ukraine, and everything else — including managing Yermak — was made to conform to that priority.” But the Trump camp doesn’t operate that way. Ukraine has relied heavily on US military and financial assistance since Russia’s war began. Washington has allocated about $175bn so far, of which $67bn has been for military support, including weapons, training and intelligence. In early March, the Trump White House ordered a temporary intelligence freeze, alongside a pause of military aid, part of a campaign to force Zelenskyy’s team to co-operate with Trump’s plans to end the war on terms seen by Kyiv as heavily weighted in favour of Moscow.
Zelenskyy’s now infamous February White House visit, orchestrated by a bullish Yermak against the advice of US officials — and some sceptical members of his own team — is a case in point. As a gift for Trump, Zelenskyy had brought a belt belonging to the Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk. However, following a recommendation from Yermak, Zelenskyy first presented Trump with a folder of photographs of mistreated Ukrainian prisoners of war. According to a US official and an adviser to the Ukrainian president, the gesture cast a shadow over the meeting.
As news cameras trained on Zelenskyy, Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, turned on the Ukrainian leader. Trump accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with world war three”, while Vance scolded him for being ungrateful for American assistance. With Yermak sitting quietly to one side, Zelenskyy attempted to defend himself as Ukraine’s relationship with its most important ally nearly ran off the rails.
Relations hadn’t improved much by Yermak’s latest trip to Washington last month. He showed up hoping for key meetings with several of Trump’s top people, which were either drastically curtailed or fell through entirely. One with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles never materialised. “They met in a hallway, walking past each other,” said one person briefed on the interaction. As Wiles moved on, Yermak managed a single sentence: “I want to say we are winning the war.” An attempt to meet secretary of state and national security adviser Marco Rubio went only slightly better. Vance’s team gave him the cold shoulder. “It was a disaster,” one Ukrainian official admitted.
At a meeting in Jeddah in March, an agreement between Ukrainian and US officials over Trump’s proposed 30-day ceasefire with Russia nearly collapsed because Yermak refused to sign, wary that even a temporary truce could hand Moscow time to regroup, according to officials familiar with the matter. Rubio and Trump’s then national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had pushed hard for the deal. But Yermak held firm. It took a last-minute backchannel effort by Waltz to reach Zelenskyy directly. When the Ukrainian president got Yermak on the phone, his message was clear: agree to the ceasefire.
Yermak has managed the unusual feat of irking US politicians on both sides of the aisle, according to current and former officials in Kyiv and Washington, a bipartisan achievement few can boast of and not the kind worth celebrating in Kyiv.
“He makes everything harder than it needs to be. He doesn’t generate any creative ideas. He also tends to make it about himself,” said a former US official briefed on Yermak’s trip. “One of the sharpest criticisms is that he sometimes doesn’t seem genuinely interested in his own country. It’s all about inserting himself into the centre of decision-making, to the point where it actively harms Zelenskyy and Ukraine.”
The officials didn’t deny that Yermak had notched up some victories. Two cited his June 2024 peace summit in Bürgenstock in the Swiss Alps, which they credited with helping bring on board several countries from the global south that had remained neutral on the war or were leaning towards supporting Moscow. But others said the summit and its predecessor at Boryspil airport were ill-conceived. “A PR show,” said one western ambassador, considering Russia and China were not involved.
“Unfortunately, often Andriy would focus on things that I don’t think were critical to them winning the war,” said a former US official who has worked with Yermak. More than one western official cited Yermak’s alleged connection to anonymous Telegram channels — with names such as Vertical, Joker and House of Cards — that have repeatedly attacked his critics. (Yermak denied any involvement with the channels.)
Certainly, Yermak seems never far from controversy. Some critics have focused their attention on Oleh Tatarov, one of Yermak’s closest allies inside the government, who has been the subject of multiple journalistic investigations alleging corruption and abuse of power. Though charged in 2020 over an alleged bribery scheme, the case was eventually dropped.
They claim Tatarov acts as Yermak’s enforcer, offering protection and quietly exerting control over Ukraine’s vast security and law enforcement agencies. That control, they say, has put pressure on anti-corruption investigators, stalled prosecutions and brought a selective enforcement that shields allies while keeping opponents in check. Several high-profile cases have mysteriously lost momentum once they reached agencies in Tatarov’s orbit. Tatarov has repeatedly denied all allegations of corruption or abuse of power.
Trump’s America First hardliners have seized on criticisms of Yermak, portraying them as reflective of Zelenskyy himself. “You have these folks in Maga world who are exploiting how [Yermak] operates and say, this is why [Ukraine] can’t contribute to the US in any way and ultimately why we should abandon them,” said a former US official who worked on Ukraine policy. “It’s gotten to the point where it’s dangerous . . . Washington is too complex for one-man diplomacy.”
One senior Ukrainian official who has worked closely with the president’s office compared the relationship between Zelenskyy and Yermak to that of George W Bush and his powerful vice-president, Dick Cheney. “The scene from Vice,” the official said, referring to the 2018 film that traces Cheney’s rise to power and influence over Bush, “the scene where they divide responsibilities, it’s like that.”
One controversy in particular has dogged Yermak. In July 2020, Ukraine’s military and domestic intelligence agencies planned a sting operation to capture 33 mercenaries from Russia’s notorious Wagner Group, the Kremlin-linked paramilitary force known for its brutality in operations stretching from Ukraine to Africa. They had been lured to Belarus with the promise of a fake mission to Venezuela. The plan was to intercept their flight to South America, force it to land in Kyiv and arrest them on arrival. But the operation was abruptly delayed. According to the investigative group Bellingcat, which cited Ukrainian and foreign intelligence sources, the order came from Yermak, who allegedly feared the operation would derail a nascent and fragile ceasefire with Russia.
Days later, the mercenaries were arrested in Minsk by Belarusian authorities and sent back to Russia, sparking outrage and accusations of sabotage in Ukraine when the details became public. There were even public claims that Yermak might be a Russian spy. Yermak denied the allegations, calling them disinformation. Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, defended him, telling me Yermak had been unfairly scapegoated and played only a marginal role. Still, five years later, “Wagnergate” remains a source of contention.
Yermak, who counts among his heroes Cardinal Richelieu and Henry Kissinger, brushes off any suggestion that he has upstaged his leader. “Sometimes there are campaigns against me, information attacks. People say Yermak is doing this or that. It’s nonsense. We’re a new kind of political force in Ukraine . . . That makes some people uncomfortable or afraid,” he said. “Look, very few people are willing to dedicate 100 per cent of their lives and time to the country. When they see they can’t control or influence someone like me, it bothers them. But honestly? I don’t care.”
An accusation which Yermak is known to be sensitive about relates to his younger brother, Denys, a businessman who has been the focal point of several corruption allegations. Last month new allegations were quietly levelled against him by the same military intelligence chief, Budanov, who defended Yermak to me. He claimed Denys had attempted to use his position to enrich himself. Denys has denied all the allegations made against him and Yermak tried to have Budanov removed, two people with knowledge of the matter told me. One of them claimed the incident had nearly boiled over into open rebellion.
Oleh Rybachuk knows what it means to be the man behind the throne. As chief of staff to Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s third head of state, from 2005 to 2006, he occupied the same position Yermak holds today. In theory, their responsibilities were identical. In reality, they are very different. “There’s now no path to Zelenskyy that bypasses Yermak,” Rybachuk told me. “And that’s the problem.”
Rybachuk pointed to the dismissals of Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s popular former commander-in-chief; Dmytro Kuleba, Zelenskyy’s wartime foreign minister; and Oleksandr Kubrakov, the reform-minded infrastructure minister. According to two former senior Ukrainian officials, Yermak oversaw the dismissal of Zaluzhny, as well as his PR chief, Lyudmila Dolgonovska. Zaluzhny’s fate was sealed following what many viewed as an unusually blunt assessment of Ukraine’s war prospects in Autumn 2023: “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” Zaluzhny said. He now serves as Ukraine’s ambassador in London, far from the decision-making centre in Kyiv. Kuleba, an affable politician and diplomat, was also deemed too popular, according to three senior officials familiar with the matter.
Kubrakov’s ouster sent ripples through Kyiv and western capitals alike. The former US ambassador Brink, along with the G7 ambassadors in Ukraine, posted supportive messages on social media, rallying behind him. To contain the fallout, Zelenskyy convened a meeting with the ambassadors, ostensibly to discuss energy security. But as the diplomats crowded into his office, it became clear the real agenda was Kubrakov. They demanded answers from the president and Yermak, who was also present. Zelenskyy grew enraged, rebuffing their queries, some of those envoys told me. “The meeting was a scandal,” said one of the ambassadors.
Afterwards, Telegram channels that western officials and Ukrainian journalists have said are associated with Yermak began surfacing unfounded rumours alleging corruption, which Kubrakov dismissed. Yermak denied involvement and his aides denied any association with the channels.
Rybachuk described the presidential office as a largely closed system that prizes loyalty over competence. “Zelenskyy doesn’t want to be burdened with complexity. He wants quick, simple solutions. Yermak provides that,” he said. “Talk about Zelenskyy and you’re talking about Yermak. Talk about Yermak and it’s Zelenskyy. They’ve become one.”
There’s now no path to Zelenskyy that bypasses Yermak
Oleh Rybachuk, former Ukrainian government chief
Even so, Rybachuk added, Zelenskyy has a mandate to lead. “Yermak has none. And yet he makes decisions that override ministers, leads diplomatic delegations and speaks for the state . . . It’s a big constitutional question in our country.”
In Rybachuk’s view, Yermak’s genius isn’t governance, but his ability to manage the president. “He’s like an F-16 with a long-range radar. If someone is gaining popularity, Yermak is the first to whisper it in Zelenskyy’s ear. He plays on Zelenskyy’s moods. He knows exactly what to say and when to say it, to eliminate political threats. He makes it seem like he’s protecting Zelenskyy, but really, he’s weakening him. Because without strong personalities around you, you start to live in a bubble.” The result is a kind of “personalised governance” which “has failed every Ukrainian president”, Rybachuk said. “None of them built real political parties to share responsibility. And Zelenskyy is repeating the same mistake.”
Some believe Zelenskyy’s decisions are catching up with him. While he remains popular, his approval ratings are trending downward. One June poll showed that 65 per cent of Ukrainians trust the president — down 9 percentage points from the month before. The data reflects a deeper uncertainty about what kind of society will emerge from wartime: is Ukraine moving towards deeper democracy, or sliding slowly into authoritarianism? Another poll, in late May, revealed a society split over that question: answers depended less on ideology than on trust in Zelenskyy and his administration. Among those who said they distrusted the president, more than 80 per cent saw signs of creeping authoritarianism.
Over the past few months, Yermak had been working on a crowning project of sorts: the biggest reshuffle of Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers since the start of the war. Last week, he successfully completed it, installing his protégé as prime minister, which MPs, civil society leaders and western diplomats described as securing his control over the government. Denys Shmyhal, the 49-year-old technocrat who had served as prime minister since 2020, was replaced by Yulia Svyrydenko, the 39-year-old first deputy prime minister and economy minister, who is often referred to in Kyiv as one of Yermak’s people. Since the war began, when Yermak has needed to travel abroad on official business, he has included Svyrydenko as the formal head of the delegation. As chief of staff, Yermak was not entitled to use the government aircraft, but Svyrydenko, then the first deputy prime minister, was.
Svyrydenko is seen by many as an intelligent manager and she has achieved something that Yermak has thus far failed to do: build a healthy rapport with the Trump administration, particularly with Treasury secretary Bessent, after she stepped in to take the much-vaunted minerals deal across the finish line.
But the new prime minister’s most defining asset may be her unwavering loyalty to Zelenskyy, and to his powerful chief of staff. “You can’t run a country on instincts,” Rybachuk said. “You need structure, institutions, strategy. This is what’s missing. Yermak and Zelenskyy, they’ve eliminated any viable competition for now. But after the war, the reckoning will come.”
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რუსეთ-უკრაინის ომი, თემა N117, შემდეგი ყირიმის ხიდი იყოს
