Andriy Yermak steps off an aircraft and envelops his boss in a bear hug.
The touchy-feely moment with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in September 2019 marked an early success in a nascent political partnership, as Yermak returned from Moscow with 35 Ukrainians released from Russian jails.
The following year, Yermak became Zelenskyy’s chief of staff. But now his position is under intense scrutiny by a corruption scandal that is shaking the political establishment in Kyiv.
It’s alleged that Yermak played a role -- which investigators have not detailed -- in a corruption scheme that saw the siphoning off of funds earmarked for building defenses to protect Ukraine's vulnerable energy infrastructure from Russian air attacks to third parties.
He has not responded to requests from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service for comment on the claims.
From TV To Politics
Yermak’s ties to Zelenskyy pre-date either of their entries into politics.
He ran a law firm that provided legal services to Zelenskyy's entertainment production company, Kvartal 95, which propelled Zelenskyy to fame in his role as accidental president in the hit TV comedy Servant of the People.
“Their relationship started around 2010,” Olena Prokopenko, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, told RFE/RL. "Zelenskyy trusts Yermak to the extent he arguably doesn't trust anyone else. Yermak is his only confidant and trusted ally in the Ukrainian political landscape."
This trust gave Yermak a prominent role soon after Zelenskyy became president in 2019, with his appointment as a foreign policy adviser.
It was in this job that he negotiated the prisoner swap with Russia, which had been supporting armed separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict with Kyiv since 2014.
Yermak was also Zelenskyy's point man for ties with Washington, where evidence emerged during impeachment hearings that he had been in touch with US President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
“We regard the United States as a friend and strategic partner. What's going on there now is their internal politics. We won't play any role in it,” Yermak said at the time.
In February 2020, when Zelenskyy appointed him as chief of staff, he told Current Time that his major focus would be the conflict in the east.
“For the president and the presidential administration, one of the priorities today certainly is -- and will always be -- the cessation of the war in the Donbas,” he said.
The Power Behind The Throne
But critics said Yermak’s activities went well beyond this, using the president’s office to accumulate power and influence behind the scenes.
His role has become so ubiquitous in the halls of power in Ukraine that a common joke among Ukrainians is that foreign investors and officials should come to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy so he can introduce them Yermak.
"He has influence on almost all important decisions in the country," former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk told RFE/RL in July 2021, describing Yermak as "probably de facto No. 2 after the president."
Yermak was accused, variously, of directing foreign policy, influencing senior appointments, and acting as gatekeeper to Zelenskyy. These criticisms have continued to the present day.
“Nobody elected this person, or the advisers,” opposition lawmaker Iryna Gereshchenko told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on November 19.
“They rule the country. They convene meetings of security officials…the whole country knows who actually rules the state today, having crossed out the constitution.”
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Yermak was part of the inner circle who stayed with Zelenskyy in Kyiv despite the United States urging him to flee.
He towered over the diminutive Zelenskyy’s left shoulder in a selfie video where the Ukrainian president defiantly declared “we are here” on the first night of the attack.
In his 2024 book The Showman, US journalist Simon Shuster wrote that Yermak and Zelenskyy were inseparable from the first hours of the war, drinking wine together in the evening to relieve stress.
"They've become fused together like Siamese twins. Over five years of working together, they've become almost a single entity," Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Center for Political Studies in Kyiv, told RFE/RL.
Yermak has also continued his key foreign policy role during the all-out war, attending multiple diplomatic meetings including Zelenskyy’s tour of European capitals in recent days.
Yet now Yermak has been caught up in the high-level corruption investigation that has already led to the downfall of two cabinet ministers and seen another Zelenskyy associate from his Kvartal 95 days, Tymur Minchik, flee the country. In total, five suspects are currently in custody or out on bail.
Ali Baba
Investigators at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have released secret recordings in which the suspects, identified by codenames, are heard discussing their plans.
On November 18, a Ukrainian lawmaker alleged one of those names, Ali Baba, was actually Yermak. The lawmaker, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, said the records showed Yermak ordering an investigation against NABU officials.
NABU has not commented on the identity of Ali Baba, but the allegations have sparked intense pressure for Yermak’s dismissal or resignation, though Zelenskyy has not been directly implicated in the scandal.
“Everyone understands that the power Zelenskyy gave Yermak in the last years allowed these (corruption) schemes to be rolled out,” anti-corruption campaigner Oleh Rybachuk told RFE/RL.
Rybachuk, who held Yermak’s position during 2005-06 under then President Viktor Yushchenko, added: “If he really is a friend of the president, as he himself claims, if he is ready to sacrifice his life and political career for him, then how does he not understand he is obliged to resign?”
In another sign of how close the two men are, Zelenskyy has said of Yermak “we came together, and we will leave together.”
It’s this proximity that makes the allegations surrounding Yermak so potentially dangerous for Zelenskyy.
"For Zelenskyy, dismissing Yermak would be like chopping off his own right hand,” said Fesenko, the political analyst.
“After Yermak's dismissal, the opposition's main target would be Zelenskyy himself.”
