In the early hours of 28 November, anti-corruption officials wearing body armour raided the home of Andriy Yermak, Volodymyr Zelensky’s long-time chief of staff and one of the most powerful figures in Ukrainian politics. At first, Yermak appeared to be trying to hang onto his job, insisting that he had nothing to hide and was co-operating fully with investigators. But by the end of the day, he had resigned.
Zelensky announced Yermak’s departure in a solemn address to the nation, praising Yermak for his work on peace negotiations, where he said he had always maintained a “patriotic position,” but acknowledging that he needed to “eliminate any rumours and speculation”. Ukraine could not afford to “make mistakes,” Zelensky said. He urged the country to “stand together” and not to “lose our unity”. Unsaid, but clearly understood was that the greatest current threat to that unity is not the Russian troops grinding on with their assault, and the nightly bombing of Ukrainian cities, but an unfolding corruption scandal that has now engulfed the most senior levels of his government.
Under the codename Operation Midas, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have already implicated Zelensky’s close friend and former business partner, Timur Mindich, along with the energy and justice ministers, Svitlana Hrynchuk and Herman Haluschchenko, in an alleged $100 million scheme involving the state nuclear power company Energoatom. Mindich fled Ukraine hours before officers from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (Nabu) raided his apartment on 10 November, suggesting he had been tipped off about the operation, and is currently in exile, rumoured to be in Israel. Hrynchuk and Halushchenko both resigned. (All three have, like Yermak, denied any wrongdoing.)
The scandal has consumed Ukrainian politics, with investigators drip-feeding surveillance footage and tantalising details of the alleged scheme, with suspects given nicknames such as “Sugarman” and “Che Guevara.” There had been rumours for weeks that more senior figures would yet be implicated, perhaps including Yermak. It is ironic that Zelensky, a former comedian who made his name as a television star playing a president who rails against corruption, is now embattled by allegations of eye-watering levels of corruption within his government, with the details seeping out in a series of slickly produced social media videos, the very same medium for which he once earned such acclaim.
It is hard to overstate Yermak’s towering importance in Ukraine’s wartime politics, and how closely he is associated with Zelensky personally. A tall, imposing figure, Yermak stood out alongside the Ukrainian president in his defiant address to the nation on the second day of the Russian invasion in February 2022, as he panned around the cabinet with his mobile phone to prove that they would not flee the capital, insisting, “we are all here”. Yermak is said to have become Zelensky’s closest confidante and most trusted adviser, and had been appointed to lead the latest peace negotiations with the US, travelling to Geneva at the head of the Ukrainian delegation for talks with secretary of state Marco Rubio last week.
Yermak’s fall represents both a bitter personal blow to Zelensky and the greatest political crisis he has confronted since the start of the war. Ukrainians took to the streets in the thousands this summer, despite the clear danger from Russian missiles and drones, to protest his efforts to rein in the very same anti-corruption agencies that are now investigating his closest ally. If Zelensky’s attempt to bring those agencies under his direct supervision had succeeded, he would have been in a position to halt the inquiries into Yermak, Mindich, and the others. He will now face renewed scrutiny as to what, exactly, he knew at the time, and whether he was attempting to protect his powerful friends.
It also difficult to understate how damaging this scandal – and the particularly galling details it involves – could prove to Ukraine’s wartime resilience more broadly. At a time when Ukrainians are already confronting another brutal winter of long blackouts and freezing temperatures, with the Russian military deliberately targeting the country’s energy infrastructure, the notion that senior Ukrainian officials attempted to enrich themselves with the funds meant to help protect those facilities will, rightly, be seen as indefensible. The perception of high-level graft will surely be felt as a betrayal by those fighting on the front line, and the families of those who have who lost their lives. Ukraine’s armed forces already faced a grave manpower crisis, with many frontline units stretched dangerously thin. The last thing they needed was a collapse in morale and the sense that the country was also under attack from within.
Zelensky’s remaining allies can now claim that he is taking forceful action to deal with the rot, demonstrated by his decision to sacrifice Yermak, the most important figure in his government. But his critics will argue that it is too little, too late, and that irreparable harm has already been done. Expect Russia, and the US, to attempt to exploit this crisis, sensing a moment of real and dangerous weakness for the Ukrainian president, at a time when both countries have already attempted to extract painful concessions from Kyiv. Zelensky will need all his political skill and fortitude to extract himself from this crisis, this time, without his most formidable ally.
[See also: The devil in the details of Trump’s new peace plan for Ukraine]
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