Foreign Affairs Zelensky’s Top Man Is a Big Problem One threat to Ukraine’s democracy is coming from inside the house. (Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images) U.S. policy on Russia–Ukraine seems to vacillate depending on which foreign leader President Donald Trump lately deems the biggest irritant and obstacle to peace: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky or Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But Trump should from time to time direct his frustrations against a lesser-known figure: Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff and right-hand man. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Yermak has become as powerful as the Ukrainian president, if not more so. Yermak has wielded his enormous influence in the Zelensky government to control the flow of information between Kiev’s leadership and Western capitals about the war; to push a hardline negotiating stance that many analysts consider counter-productive; and to sideline ministers in a bid to control Ukraine’s diplomatic channels. He has also sought to marginalize figures and institutions crucial to the war effort, including Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence. The agency’s respected and battle-hardened chief, Kyrylo Budanov, reportedly has faced repeated attempts by Yermak to elbow him out of government. Yermak’s profound and peculiar influence over Zelensky raises broader concerns that go beyond the present war. The two men rallied Ukrainians in the early weeks of Putin’s invasion, bravely refusing to flee the country and even defiantly proclaiming their continued presence, but these days, their cloistered partnership increasingly threatens a fundamental value for which the Ukrainians are fighting: Western-style democracy. Yermak has branded critics of Zelensky as Russian stooges, weaponized government institutions against domestic political enemies, obstructed Ukraine’s campaign against corruption, and according to critics created a new system of oligarchy. Yermak’s story didn’t begin in the world of politics. He was an attorney, film producer, and occasional importer of luxury fashion products when he first met Zelensky—at the time, a comedian and actor—in 2011. The two hit it off, with Yermak, who is single and childless, later saying he had admired how Zelensky talked about family life. In 2019, Yermak worked on Zelensky’s presidential election campaign and, after a decisive victory, became a top foreign policy advisor in the new administration. The next year, Yermak was appointed head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, a position he has transformed into a bottleneck of the Zelensky government.  By all accounts, Zelensky and Yermak are inseparable friends and confidants. The pro-Ukrainian journalist Christopher Miller of the Financial Times, in a profile of Yermak published this July, reported that the two men even sleep near each other in the president’s bunker, often after a night playing table tennis or watching classic movies. In the early mornings, they lift weights together, with the hulking, six-foot-plus Yermak presumably adding more plates to the barbell than the diminutive Zelensky. Afterwards, Yermak labors intensely for many hours in his office, two floors below the president’s. “There’s now no path to Zelensky that bypasses Yermak,” one former chief of staff to a Ukrainian president told Miller. “And that’s the problem.” When Zelensky arrived at DC two weeks ago for yet another White House meeting with Trump, Yermak was there on the tarmac, “welcoming” the Ukrainian leader as he deplaned. And there he was during the working lunch with Trump’s inner circle, sitting on Zelensky’s right. In the weeks prior, Yermak had been active behind the scenes, preparing the Ukrainian team for yet another White House meeting and expressing the hope—a false hope, as it turned out—that Trump was ready to give Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles. (Yermak also had pushed for the White House meeting in February—the disastrous one now known as the “blowup” in the Oval Office.) Several analysts took the recent meeting—which degenerated into a shouting match behind closed doors—as evidence that Yermak misreads DC and gives poor advice on how to manage relations with the White House. They pointed also to Zelensky’s meeting with the heads of hawkish American think tanks—most of which oppose Trump’s brand of MAGA conservatism—an apparent waste of precious time and possible annoyance to White House officials who favor foreign-policy restraint. This line of criticism isn’t new. In June, POLITICO reported on U.S. elites’ bipartisan disdain for Yermak and the widely held view that he is “uninformed about U.S. politics, abrasive and overly demanding with U.S. officials.” Still, however much antipathy he may draw from U.S. elites, Yermak is a savvy political operator, and ultimately he and Zelensky got much of what they wanted from their trip. Though Trump passed on providing Tomahawks, the presidential pendulum swung back against Russia. A previously announced Trump–Putin summit in Budapest was put on ice, the U.S. lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s launching Western-provided missiles into Russia, and Trump announced the first sanctions against Moscow of his second term.  But while Yermak may succeed in scoring political wins and advancing a hopeful narrative of approaching victory over Russia, that narrative increasingly is contradicted by the worsening battlefield situation. For all Yermak’s successes at securing Western support, his machinations arguably have made any future diplomatic resolution with Russia less likely. And without a negotiated settlement, Ukraine is unlikely to survive as a sovereign and democratic, albeit truncated, state.  Consider the Ukrainians’ insistence on a trilateral leaders’ meeting with Trump, Zelensky, and Putin. The demand has agitated the Kremlin, which favors preparatory meetings to hammer out details before the three presidents convene to sign an agreement. Some American experts also recommend a series of lower-level meetings to pave the way for a peace summit. After all, it’s rather unlikely that the three presidents, if they met to finalize a post-war settlement, could find agreement on tricky issues, such as how wide a demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine should be. But Trump himself has embraced headline-grabbing, presidential-level discussions, creating an opportunity for Kiev. By insisting on such a summit, the Ukrainian government can present itself as cooperative with the American president and Putin as an intransigent opponent of diplomacy. Yermak has masterfully exploited that opportunity, but he has thereby helped delay the long and arduous diplomatic process that may be necessary to end a war that continues to devastate Ukraine. Yermak also racks up short-term political wins in the cut-throat game of Ukrainian domestic politics. During the 2019 campaign, Zelensky was surrounded by a retinue of loyal and competent underlings, many of whom have been discarded as Yermak eliminates political rivals and secures promotions for personal allies to top positions. He is also widely believed to have engineered the ouster of Valery Zaluzhny—who became a political threat to Zelensky after achieving almost mythic popularity commanding Ukraine’s military early in the war—sending him to London, where he serves as an ambassador.  After the Oval Office blowup in February, Vice President J.D. Vance’s office reached out to Zaluzhny, seeing him as a potential replacement for Zelensky, but Yermak convinced the former general to reject the calls. The episode illustrates that the White House cannot rein in Zelensky without attending to the equally powerful Yermak, who has demonstrated real political acumen. But Yermak’s personal political victories have eroded Ukraine’s fragile democracy, neutering its parliament and other representative institutions. “We don’t have a proper functioning Cabinet of ministers,” Daria Kaleniuk, head of the Anti-Corruption Action NGO, told POLITICO. “Instead, we have some quasi-Cabinet of ministers headed by Yermak, who controls access to the president’s agenda and to the president himself.” As Yermak has thrown his weight around in Kiev’s political arena, ordinary Ukrainians outside the halls of power have taken note. After Zelensky signed a law constraining the independence of anti-corruption watchdogs in July—a power grab devised and implemented by Yermak—street protesters made clear which man they thought most deserved their opprobrium. “Yermak out!” they chanted. “F— Yermak!” Facing political blowback, Zelensky reversed the move. Suspicions of stifling corruption investigations have long surrounded Yermak and contributed to Ukrainians’ distrust of him; a government case against his younger brother Denys for bribery was secretly closed in 2021. A divide between Yermak and the Ukrainian people has also emerged on the question of how the war should end. A strong majority of Ukrainians—69 percent—say Kiev should seek to negotiate with Russia to end the war as soon as possible, according to a recent Gallup survey. Only 24 percent said the Ukrainian government should fight until victory. Nevertheless, Yermak shoots down talk of making concessions to Moscow and constricts Kiev’s diplomatic strategy. In an article published last year in Foreign Affairs, Yermak laid out his vision of Ukraine’s path to peace. “Step One: Win the War.” To be sure, Putin may never settle for any outcome to the war other than Ukraine’s total military capitulation. But as the war grinds on toward that dreary outcome, the Ukrainians should be ready to embrace good-faith, sub-presidential negotiations in case the Kremlin decides it wants peace. Moreover, the Ukrainians need to prepare for what would follow a negotiated settlement: Years weeding out systemic corruption, shoring up Ukraine’s representative institutions, and finally making a clean break with post-Soviet structures of oligarchic authority. Judging by his contributions throughout the war, Yermak, if he remained a powerful figure after its resolution, would impede Ukraine’s efforts to achieve each of those goals. As the Trump administration appraises threats to the Ukrainian state, they should find ways to outmaneuver not only the president in Moscow, but the man who runs the Office of the President in Kiev. The post Zelensky’s Top Man Is a Big Problem appeared first on The American Conservative.