Who Is Andriy Yermak? Zelenskyy Aide Who Was Ukraine’s Second Most Powerful Man

Last Updated:November 30, 2025, 13:25 IST

Andriy Yermak had been the target of anti-corruption authorities after allegations that close associates of Zelenskyy embezzled $100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector

Andriy Yermark with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (right). (AP File)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday said his top aide, Andriy Yermak, had resigned as the Chief of Staff after investigators raided his house as part of a sweeping corruption probe.

“The Office of the President of Ukraine will be reorganised. The head of the office, Andriy Yermak, has submitted his resignation," Zelenskyy said in a video address, adding that he would hold consultations with a possible replacement on Saturday.

In recent times, Yermak had been the target of anti-corruption authorities after allegations that close associates of Zelenskyy, including his business partner Tymur Mindich and two government ministers, embezzled $100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector.

Who is Andriy Yermak?

One of Ukraine’s most influential political operators and a close aide of Zelenskyy resigned hours after anti-corruption agencies raided his home – a major crisis as Kyiv faces new pressure from the US to accept a peace deal to end the war with Russia, CNN reported.

Officially the chief of staff to the president, Yermak, has often been seen as Ukraine’s second most powerful man. He has been leading the Ukrainian delegation during recent talks in Geneva with Washington.

Since before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, he was rarely far from Zelenskyy’s side, whether welcoming foreign dignitaries to Kyiv, or accompanying the Ukrainian president abroad on crucial missions to secure military and diplomatic support.

Yermak’s widespread unpopularity was a function of his immense power as an electorally unaccountable head of the Presidential Office. “He was a shadow prime minister," Orysia Lutsevych of London-based think tank Chatham House said, describing a man who effectively chose who would serve in Zelenskyy’s government.

But Yermak was also fiercely loyal to his boss. “There (was) a lot of co-dependency, they spent a lot of time together … Yermak positioned himself as a negotiator, as somebody who not only kind of runs the regular daily activities, but can solve problems," Lutsevych said. “He’s a deal maker."

Of his chief adviser, Zelenskyy himself said last year: “I respect him for his results. He does what I tell him."

As he announced the dismissal, Zelenskyy said he was grateful to Yermak for “always representing Ukraine’s position in negotiations in exactly the right way", “It has always been a patriotic position," he added.

What is the scandal?

The Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office are leading a major investigation into the $100-million energy sector corruption scandal involving top Ukrainian officials which has dominated domestic headlines in recent weeks.

Both of Ukraine’s two main anti-corruption bodies, the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), were involved in the searches, according to a statement released by the agencies on Friday, as per CNN.

Two national agencies fighting entrenched corruption in Ukraine said their searches targeted Yermak. Oleksii Tkachuk, a spokesperson for Yermak, said the anti-graft agencies had not served Yermak a notice of suspicion, meaning he was not a suspect in an investigation. Yermak confirmed that agencies searched his apartment inside the presidential compound in downtown Kyiv, where checkpoints limit public access. “The investigators are facing no obstacles," Yermak wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

Investigators suspect that Tymur Mindich, a one-time business partner of Zelenskyy, was the plot’s mastermind. Mindich has fled the country, with any criminal proceedings against him likely to be carried out in absentia. Two top government ministers have resigned in the scandal.

Will it affect Zelenskyy?

The corruption scandal has rocked Ukraine and intensified troubles for Zelenskyy as he seeks continued support from Western countries for Ukraine’s war effort and tries to ensure continued foreign funding. The European Union, which Ukraine wants to join, has told Zelenskyy he must crack down on graft. Yermak had been expected to go to the US this weekend to lead Ukraine’s delegation in another round of talks with the Trump administration.

It is unclear who will take his place as team leader, although Ukraine certainly has plenty of senior officials with experience of these highly difficult negotiations. And even though he played such a prominent role in Zelenskyy’s diplomatic endeavors, Yermak’s reputation abroad was not what it once was. Becoming embroiled in a major corruption scandal only further weakened his standing, particularly in the United States, where even the whiff of misappropriated funds has always proved a major stumbling block for many of Ukraine’s supporters in Congress.

Now, Yermak’s resignation could become Zelenskyy’s biggest political test since taking office six-and-a-half years ago. While the departure will likely play well at home, it casts uncertainty into the heart of the administration at a critical diplomatic moment.

Among Ukrainians, Yermak’s downfall will likely find considerable approval. Yermak had become a deeply unpopular figure who “somehow aggregated all the dissatisfaction with what the president does wrong," Nataliya Gumenyuk, a member of the board of independent news media organization Hromadske, told CNN.

A series of corruption scandals in recent years, a bust-up with his former, and highly popular, army chief, and the messy introduction of new mobilisation policies have all threatened to tarnish Zelenskyy’s image. But while his approval ratings are a way down from 2022 levels, they have held fairly steady over the last couple of years.

Another journalist, Olga Rudenko of the Kyiv Independent, said Yermak’s departure was proof of the strength of Ukrainian democracy. “Think about it: A young democracy like Ukraine has independent institutions that are strong enough to investigate the most powerful man in the country – and to do so during the war," she wrote on X.

A key question will be whether his departure increases the domestic pressure on Zelenskyy himself, or in fact turns the tide. Gumenyuk said she believed Ukrainians would accept Zelenskyy’s framing of the loss of his right-hand man as a positive reset of his administration. And the president will have been heartened that MPs from his own party – some of whom had threatened to leave the party if Yermak remained in post – issued a statement praising him for putting the interests of the country first. But a former government official told CNN the decision had come too late, arguing many Ukrainians would now be asking what Zelenskyy knew about Yermak’s actions. “On the one side, you have his close ally, on the other side, you have his close friend, his former business partner," the official said, referring to both Yermak and another man caught up in the latest scandal, Timur Mindich. “Do you really think the president wasn’t aware about this?" One European diplomat based in Kyiv told CNN that Zelenskyy “had little choice but to fire Yermak in view of the damaging headlines carried by global media".

Russia, unsurprisingly, has seized on an opportunity to try to undermine Zelenskyy’s legitimacy. “(The) political uncertainty that is caused by this scandal is growing and growing very fast, day by day. One can hardly now make a prognosis on what is going to happen next," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN’s Matthew Chance.

Pulling all the threads together, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister and a key international ally of Ukraine, saw things bleakly. He drew attention to the fact Yermak’s dismissal took place on the same day as a visit by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Moscow, and in the midst of what he called the “chaos in negotiations" with the United States. “A fatal combination," he posted on X.

With ANI, CNN, Agency Inputs

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