Andriy Yermak: how weak is Zelenskyy without his right-hand man?

As Volodmyr Zelenskyy scrambles to strengthen European support for Ukraine’s position in the peace talks, he finds himself without his long-time chief of staff and lead negotiator. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s de facto deputy leader, resigned on Friday after a dramatic anti-corruption raid on his house, and has now announced he is off to the front line.

Yermak was so influential, the political system “had come to be known in Ukraine as Yermakshchina – the era of Yermak”, said Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times. His departure is a “seismic event”. With him no longer around to oversee domestic policy, “keep a lid on power struggles within the military and oversee peace negotiations,” Zelensky’s “political control may weaken” just at the time he is looking to agree an end to the war.

What did the commentators say?

Nicknamed the “green cardinal” for his early adoption of battle fatigues, Yermak was “in every way” the “second-most powerful man in Ukraine”. A close ally of Zelenskyy, he acted more like an “unelected vice-president than a simple chief of staff” and, according to many officials and diplomats, was often “the de facto decision maker”, said Christopher Miller in the Financial Times.

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His departure will be “extremely painful” for Zelenskyy – “physically and psychologically”, Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko told The Washington Post’s Siobhan O'Grady. “Yermak was always next to him. But Zelensky is adaptive. He learns quickly. I don’t think it’s a catastrophe – but it is a serious challenge.”

Yermak had become a deeply unpopular figure in Ukraine who “somehow aggregated all the dissatisfaction with what” Zelenskyy “does wrong”, Nataliya Gumenyuk of Ukrainian news site Hromadske told Andrew Carey at CNN. So, “a key question will be whether his departure increases the domestic pressure on Zelenskyy himself, or in fact turns the tide”.

What it could do is dilute the concentration of authority in Ukraine. And that could actually “strengthen Zelenskyy both domestically but also internationally”, William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine told the FT’s Miller. “Zelenskyy has some young, competent people who could step in.”

What next?

The scandal over corruption in the state energy company has weakened Zelenskyy domestically and, this week, Ukrainian MPs will be asked to vote on his budget. Losing that vote would not be terminal but it would be “another blow to Zelenskyy’s credibility as leader”, said Dominic Hauschild in The Times.

On the international front, Zelenskyy has moved quickly to replace Yermak as lead negotiator in the peace talks. With the president facing “a new round of US pressure to reach a deal to end Russia’s war”, and Moscow continuing to “relentlessly bombard his country”, the stage is set for one of Zelenskyy’s “most politically perilous moments yet”, said O’Grady in The Washington Post.

As for Yermak, in an “impassioned text message” to the New York Post, he said was going to the front and was “prepared for any reprisals. I am an honest and decent person.”