Zelensky’s Top Aide Resigns Amid Widening Corruption Scandal -- New York Times
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New York Times Nov. 28, 2025
Zelensky’s Top Aide Resigns Amid Widening Corruption Scandal
Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff and top peace negotiator, became the highest-ranking casualty of an investigation into a vast kickback scheme. This is the most serious political crisis to face Mr. Zelensky at a time when many Western officials expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse in a matter of days.
Andriy Yermak, in Washington last year. He had been widely seen as the
Zelensky’s Top Aide Resigns Amid Widening Corruption Scandal
Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff and top peace negotiator, became the highest-ranking casualty of an investigation into a vast kickback scheme. This is the most serious political crisis to face Mr. Zelensky at a time when many Western officials expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse in a matter of days.
Andriy Yermak, in Washington last year. He had been widely seen as the
country’s second most powerful person.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
By Kim Barker and Andrew E. Kramer
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned on Friday in the highest-level political realignment in Ukraine since Russia’s all-out invasion nearly four years ago.
The departure of Mr. Yermak, who had headed Ukraine’s negotiating team in peace talks with the Trump administration, put in doubt the future of the latest round of diplomatic efforts by the United States, Ukraine and European nations to end the war.
It also cost Mr. Zelensky a longtime close ally who had been a behind-the-scenes operator, a political enforcer and, as Ukraine’s fortunes in the war slumped, a lightning rod for criticism over much of what had gone wrong, including allegations of theft from state companies.
Mr. Yermak stepped down amid a spiraling, $100 million embezzlement scandal that has already led to the dismissal of two cabinet ministers and even threatened to topple Mr. Zelensky’s entire cabinet.
“I am grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine’s position in the negotiation track exactly as it should be represented,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address announcing the resignation. He said he had accepted the resignation to “avoid rumors and speculation” about his chief of staff.
Mr. Yermak, 54, is the highest-level official to lose his job in the fallout from the 15-month investigation called Operation Midas, revealed by Ukraine’s top anti-corruption agencies, which said the effort had produced 1,000 hours of wiretaps.
Mr. Yermak has not been officially named in the investigation. But on Friday, investigators searched his home in Kyiv.
A little over a week ago, the scandal had quickly receded when the Trump administration abruptly put forward a Russia-friendly plan to end the war. Ukraine scrambled to soften provisions that Mr. Zelensky called grave challenges to his country, in talks led by Mr. Yermak.
But just as negotiations are set to resume with a return visit to Kyiv by the U.S. Army secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, the corruption case has returned to the headlines, ensnaring the very man Mr. Zelensky had entrusted with protecting Ukraine’s interests.
The dual roles of negotiator and potential criminal suspect had led to calls in Parliament and among anticorruption activists for Mr. Yermak’s firing.
Daria Kalenyuk, executive director of the Anticorruption Action Center, a Ukrainian nongovernmental group, said she worried that had Mr. Yermak remained involved in the talks, his key motivation would not have been “ensuring a good strategy for Ukrainian people,” but instead “how to use negotiations in order to preserve himself.”
Members of the political opposition in Ukraine had accused Mr. Zelensky and his top aides of using negotiations to divert attention from the domestic scandal, and of undermining the talks by including people tainted by the investigation in the delegation. They also pointed out potential conflicts of interest in negotiations over a clause that would have offered amnesty for crimes committed during the war.
Mr. Yermak’s departure comes at a delicate moment in the talks, with the United States pushing for a quick resolution but Ukraine and Russia still seemingly far apart. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has insisted that Ukraine cede territory as a condition for any settlement. In an interview with The Atlantic published on Thursday, Mr. Yermak said that Mr. Zelensky would not sign any document that involved giving up Ukrainian territory.
In a handout photograph by the Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, officers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau pass through a checkpoint in the government quarter in Kyiv on Friday. Ukraine’s anti-graft authorities said they were searching the offices of Andriy Yermak.Credit...Ukrainska Pravda, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ukrainska Pravda, a leading Ukrainian news outlet, has reported that Mr. Driscoll, the American negotiator, raised the corruption case with Mr. Zelensky at a meeting last week, and that Mr. Zelensky warned that the talks might collapse if his negotiators were sidelined by the case. Mr. Zelensky’s office did not respond to questions from The New York Times about the reported exchange.
Mr. Zelensky, in announcing Mr. Yermak’s departure, said his longtime aide had become a “distraction” to the war effort. But the Ukrainian president did not directly address the corruption case, which has alarmed nations that have donated billions of dollars for Ukraine’s defense.
“Russia very much wants Ukraine to make mistakes,” Mr. Zelensky said. “But there will be no mistakes on our part. Our work continues.”
A second Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, the head of the National Security and Defense Council, has been questioned in the corruption investigation but has not been dismissed from the negotiating team.
Investigators released evidence suggesting that Mr. Umerov had lobbied for a contractor selling armored vests for soldiers even though the vests had failed quality checks. Mr. Umerov denied any wrongdoing.
Investigators in the corruption case say that a group of insiders demanded kickbacks of up to 15 percent on contracts awarded by the country’s state-owned nuclear-power giant, including for shelters built to protect power plants from Russian missiles and drones.
Some of Mr. Zelensky’s closest allies have been linked to the scandal, including a former deputy prime minister, a former business partner of Mr. Zelensky and the former energy minister. Mr. Zelensky has tried to distance himself, saying anyone engaged in government corruption should be punished.
Earlier this month, an opposition member of Parliament, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who said he had helped feed information to anti-corruption investigators, said that Mr. Yermak was part of the investigation and called for his ouster.
After the investigation was unveiled, Mr. Yermak disappeared from public view for nearly five days, a rare absence for a power broker who had seemed ever-present. He later re-emerged when Mr. Zelensky appointed him to lead Ukraine’s delegation for peace talks in Geneva with U.S. officials.
Opposition politicians had said that Mr. Yermak, whose intimidating manner and tendency to micromanage have rubbed many people the wrong way, should be forced out. They had also demanded a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Some members of Mr. Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, indicated that they would vote to join the opposition in a no-confidence vote.
The firing came as members of Mr. Zelensky’s party had broken ranks and signaled that they would not vote in favor of a new budget next week unless Mr. Zelensky fired Mr. Yermak, according to a member of the party who about the internal party rift on the condition of anonymity.
This is the most serious political crisis to face Mr. Zelensky, once a darling of the West for standing up to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after the invasion in February 2022. At a time when many Western officials expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse in a matter of days, Mr. Zelensky refused plans by his security services to evacuate him from the capital, instead holing up in a spartan government bunker below the presidential office complex in Kyiv, the capital.
His face ended up on refrigerator magnets, symbols of defiance sold in tourist shops. He was given lengthy standing ovations in front of Congress and the parliaments of Europe, Britain and Canada.
Most of the time, Mr. Yermak was there. They had known each other for almost a decade by the time Mr. Zelensky took office and both worked in film and television — Mr. Zelensky, the comic actor, and Mr. Yermak, the media lawyer and occasional film producer.
At first, the new president named Mr. Yermak as a presidential aide who focused on foreign policy issues, playing a central and behind-the-scenes role negotiating over Mr. Trump’s request in 2019 that Mr. Zelensky investigate the business dealings in Ukraine of the son of former President Biden, Hunter Biden. When they became public, these talks led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in the House.
Mr. Zelensky relied on him more and more, and in February 2020, Mr. Yermak became chief of staff and a towering figure in Ukraine, always by Mr. Zelensky’s side. He was available when Mr. Zelensky woke in the morning, and late at night, when Mr. Zelensky gave his daily video address.
In any photograph of Mr. Zelensky in any world capital, Mr. Yermak was the much taller, beefier man in military garb standing nearby or bending down to whisper in the president’s ear. In the political sphere in Kyiv, Mr. Yermak became a feared hatchet man known for removing any government official who spoke out of turn or became too popular, a potential rival to him or to Mr. Zelensky.
A protester holding a poster depicting Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Yermak in July
By Kim Barker and Andrew E. Kramer
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned on Friday in the highest-level political realignment in Ukraine since Russia’s all-out invasion nearly four years ago.
The departure of Mr. Yermak, who had headed Ukraine’s negotiating team in peace talks with the Trump administration, put in doubt the future of the latest round of diplomatic efforts by the United States, Ukraine and European nations to end the war.
It also cost Mr. Zelensky a longtime close ally who had been a behind-the-scenes operator, a political enforcer and, as Ukraine’s fortunes in the war slumped, a lightning rod for criticism over much of what had gone wrong, including allegations of theft from state companies.
Mr. Yermak stepped down amid a spiraling, $100 million embezzlement scandal that has already led to the dismissal of two cabinet ministers and even threatened to topple Mr. Zelensky’s entire cabinet.
“I am grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine’s position in the negotiation track exactly as it should be represented,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address announcing the resignation. He said he had accepted the resignation to “avoid rumors and speculation” about his chief of staff.
Mr. Yermak, 54, is the highest-level official to lose his job in the fallout from the 15-month investigation called Operation Midas, revealed by Ukraine’s top anti-corruption agencies, which said the effort had produced 1,000 hours of wiretaps.
Mr. Yermak has not been officially named in the investigation. But on Friday, investigators searched his home in Kyiv.
A little over a week ago, the scandal had quickly receded when the Trump administration abruptly put forward a Russia-friendly plan to end the war. Ukraine scrambled to soften provisions that Mr. Zelensky called grave challenges to his country, in talks led by Mr. Yermak.
But just as negotiations are set to resume with a return visit to Kyiv by the U.S. Army secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, the corruption case has returned to the headlines, ensnaring the very man Mr. Zelensky had entrusted with protecting Ukraine’s interests.
The dual roles of negotiator and potential criminal suspect had led to calls in Parliament and among anticorruption activists for Mr. Yermak’s firing.
Daria Kalenyuk, executive director of the Anticorruption Action Center, a Ukrainian nongovernmental group, said she worried that had Mr. Yermak remained involved in the talks, his key motivation would not have been “ensuring a good strategy for Ukrainian people,” but instead “how to use negotiations in order to preserve himself.”
Members of the political opposition in Ukraine had accused Mr. Zelensky and his top aides of using negotiations to divert attention from the domestic scandal, and of undermining the talks by including people tainted by the investigation in the delegation. They also pointed out potential conflicts of interest in negotiations over a clause that would have offered amnesty for crimes committed during the war.
Mr. Yermak’s departure comes at a delicate moment in the talks, with the United States pushing for a quick resolution but Ukraine and Russia still seemingly far apart. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has insisted that Ukraine cede territory as a condition for any settlement. In an interview with The Atlantic published on Thursday, Mr. Yermak said that Mr. Zelensky would not sign any document that involved giving up Ukrainian territory.
In a handout photograph by the Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, officers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau pass through a checkpoint in the government quarter in Kyiv on Friday. Ukraine’s anti-graft authorities said they were searching the offices of Andriy Yermak.Credit...Ukrainska Pravda, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ukrainska Pravda, a leading Ukrainian news outlet, has reported that Mr. Driscoll, the American negotiator, raised the corruption case with Mr. Zelensky at a meeting last week, and that Mr. Zelensky warned that the talks might collapse if his negotiators were sidelined by the case. Mr. Zelensky’s office did not respond to questions from The New York Times about the reported exchange.
Mr. Zelensky, in announcing Mr. Yermak’s departure, said his longtime aide had become a “distraction” to the war effort. But the Ukrainian president did not directly address the corruption case, which has alarmed nations that have donated billions of dollars for Ukraine’s defense.
“Russia very much wants Ukraine to make mistakes,” Mr. Zelensky said. “But there will be no mistakes on our part. Our work continues.”
A second Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, the head of the National Security and Defense Council, has been questioned in the corruption investigation but has not been dismissed from the negotiating team.
Investigators released evidence suggesting that Mr. Umerov had lobbied for a contractor selling armored vests for soldiers even though the vests had failed quality checks. Mr. Umerov denied any wrongdoing.
Investigators in the corruption case say that a group of insiders demanded kickbacks of up to 15 percent on contracts awarded by the country’s state-owned nuclear-power giant, including for shelters built to protect power plants from Russian missiles and drones.
Some of Mr. Zelensky’s closest allies have been linked to the scandal, including a former deputy prime minister, a former business partner of Mr. Zelensky and the former energy minister. Mr. Zelensky has tried to distance himself, saying anyone engaged in government corruption should be punished.
Earlier this month, an opposition member of Parliament, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who said he had helped feed information to anti-corruption investigators, said that Mr. Yermak was part of the investigation and called for his ouster.
After the investigation was unveiled, Mr. Yermak disappeared from public view for nearly five days, a rare absence for a power broker who had seemed ever-present. He later re-emerged when Mr. Zelensky appointed him to lead Ukraine’s delegation for peace talks in Geneva with U.S. officials.
Opposition politicians had said that Mr. Yermak, whose intimidating manner and tendency to micromanage have rubbed many people the wrong way, should be forced out. They had also demanded a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Some members of Mr. Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, indicated that they would vote to join the opposition in a no-confidence vote.
The firing came as members of Mr. Zelensky’s party had broken ranks and signaled that they would not vote in favor of a new budget next week unless Mr. Zelensky fired Mr. Yermak, according to a member of the party who about the internal party rift on the condition of anonymity.
This is the most serious political crisis to face Mr. Zelensky, once a darling of the West for standing up to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after the invasion in February 2022. At a time when many Western officials expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse in a matter of days, Mr. Zelensky refused plans by his security services to evacuate him from the capital, instead holing up in a spartan government bunker below the presidential office complex in Kyiv, the capital.
His face ended up on refrigerator magnets, symbols of defiance sold in tourist shops. He was given lengthy standing ovations in front of Congress and the parliaments of Europe, Britain and Canada.
Most of the time, Mr. Yermak was there. They had known each other for almost a decade by the time Mr. Zelensky took office and both worked in film and television — Mr. Zelensky, the comic actor, and Mr. Yermak, the media lawyer and occasional film producer.
At first, the new president named Mr. Yermak as a presidential aide who focused on foreign policy issues, playing a central and behind-the-scenes role negotiating over Mr. Trump’s request in 2019 that Mr. Zelensky investigate the business dealings in Ukraine of the son of former President Biden, Hunter Biden. When they became public, these talks led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in the House.
Mr. Zelensky relied on him more and more, and in February 2020, Mr. Yermak became chief of staff and a towering figure in Ukraine, always by Mr. Zelensky’s side. He was available when Mr. Zelensky woke in the morning, and late at night, when Mr. Zelensky gave his daily video address.
In any photograph of Mr. Zelensky in any world capital, Mr. Yermak was the much taller, beefier man in military garb standing nearby or bending down to whisper in the president’s ear. In the political sphere in Kyiv, Mr. Yermak became a feared hatchet man known for removing any government official who spoke out of turn or became too popular, a potential rival to him or to Mr. Zelensky.
A protester holding a poster depicting Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Yermak in July
at an anti-corruption rally in Kyiv.Credit...Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
Even in 2021, a year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, The Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper in the Ukrainian capital, described Mr. Yermak as having “a somewhat sinister reputation in the media as a power-greedy and Machiavellian politician.”
He took the arrows for Mr. Zelensky, absorbing criticism over what was happening in the war or in Washington. Some said that he was the power behind the throne, a kind of puppeteer pulling Mr. Zelensky’s strings. Others, including Mr. Zelensky himself, said he was executing Mr. Zelensky’s wishes.
“I respect him for his results, he does what I tell him,” Mr. Zelensky said in response to a question about Mr. Yermak’s powerful role from a Bloomberg reporter in July 2024. Attacks against his chief of staff, Mr. Zelensky added, were actually against the president.
In the West, mounting questions about corruption were largely overshadowed by the war, until July of this year. As it became clear that the anticorruption agencies were zeroing in on Mr. Zelensky’s circle of allies, he and his party pushed through a law stripping the agencies of their independence, and a prominent investigator for one agency was arrested. Facing furious mass protests, the first of his presidency, Mr. Zelensky quickly backtracked and the law was rescinded.
But even before then, Mr. Yermak had grown deeply unpopular in Ukraine. A poll in March by the Razumkov Center, a Ukrainian think tank, showed 60 percent of the respondents trusted Mr. Zelensky. Only 17.5 percent trusted Mr. Yermak.
Yet Mr. Zelensky long trusted him with everything, even to continually press the United States for more military help — and even after Washington insiders made it clear that Mr. Yermak rubbed them the wrong way.
One senior official in the Biden administration described Mr. Yermak as a shock absorber for Mr. Zelensky, the man willing to be the object of everyone’s ire, protecting the president.
After the disastrous Oval Office meeting between Mr. Zelensky and President Trump in February, senior Trump administration officials said they passed private messages to their Ukrainian counterparts that Mr. Zelensky should fire Mr. Yermak because he was abrasive and, in part, because he needed an English translator.
But Mr. Zelensky kept him on. The Trump administration did not push harder.
Adam Entous and Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
Even in 2021, a year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, The Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper in the Ukrainian capital, described Mr. Yermak as having “a somewhat sinister reputation in the media as a power-greedy and Machiavellian politician.”
He took the arrows for Mr. Zelensky, absorbing criticism over what was happening in the war or in Washington. Some said that he was the power behind the throne, a kind of puppeteer pulling Mr. Zelensky’s strings. Others, including Mr. Zelensky himself, said he was executing Mr. Zelensky’s wishes.
“I respect him for his results, he does what I tell him,” Mr. Zelensky said in response to a question about Mr. Yermak’s powerful role from a Bloomberg reporter in July 2024. Attacks against his chief of staff, Mr. Zelensky added, were actually against the president.
In the West, mounting questions about corruption were largely overshadowed by the war, until July of this year. As it became clear that the anticorruption agencies were zeroing in on Mr. Zelensky’s circle of allies, he and his party pushed through a law stripping the agencies of their independence, and a prominent investigator for one agency was arrested. Facing furious mass protests, the first of his presidency, Mr. Zelensky quickly backtracked and the law was rescinded.
But even before then, Mr. Yermak had grown deeply unpopular in Ukraine. A poll in March by the Razumkov Center, a Ukrainian think tank, showed 60 percent of the respondents trusted Mr. Zelensky. Only 17.5 percent trusted Mr. Yermak.
Yet Mr. Zelensky long trusted him with everything, even to continually press the United States for more military help — and even after Washington insiders made it clear that Mr. Yermak rubbed them the wrong way.
One senior official in the Biden administration described Mr. Yermak as a shock absorber for Mr. Zelensky, the man willing to be the object of everyone’s ire, protecting the president.
After the disastrous Oval Office meeting between Mr. Zelensky and President Trump in February, senior Trump administration officials said they passed private messages to their Ukrainian counterparts that Mr. Zelensky should fire Mr. Yermak because he was abrasive and, in part, because he needed an English translator.
But Mr. Zelensky kept him on. The Trump administration did not push harder.
Adam Entous and Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
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