Will Yermak drag Zelensky down? The fight for political survival continues
For millions of people in Kiev, the question comes every morning this winter the question is no longer whether there will be a power outage, but for how long. Utilities are using cellphones to announce when the lights will be restored in specific neighborhoods. The situation is now so dramatic that last week one day electricity was available for only one and a half hours.
Through massive missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Russia is causing a complete blackout of power. At the beginning of November, even the Ukrainian president himself suffered injuries in his closely guarded palace. During a British reporter's interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, the lights suddenly went out – twice before the generators turned on.
The situation may deteriorate further because Kiev lacks air defense systems and interceptor missiles. Western production and supplies cannot keep pace with Russia's war industry.
For Zelensky, the coming months are not only a matter of whether the lights will literally go out in the country – his political survival is also at stake. A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian anti-corruption office NABU discovered suspicious bribery and embezzlement of approximately EUR 87 million [ok. 370 mln zł] – including in the energy sector.
The defendants include the president's associates, including now-resigned ministers and Timur Mindich, Zelensky's former business partner. On Friday morning, NABU investigators searched the house of Andriy Yermak, Zelensky's controversial chief of staff and confidant. who is considered an eminence grise due to his power.
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On Friday evening, Yermak resigned. — There will be a reorganization of the presidential office, Zelensky announced. He added that he was “grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine's position in the negotiations exactly as necessary.”
“It's hard to imagine that Yermak didn't know about the corruption scandal”
The 54-year-old son of a former Soviet diplomat belongs to the small group of people the president had gathered around him from the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion. When Russian troops advanced on Kiev in the first weeks of the war, Zelensky and Yermak shared the burden of responsibility.
It was Yermak who negotiated a possible peace plan with the Americans, organized a prisoner exchange with Russia, and also he pulled the strings in domestic politics. Due to repeated allegations of corruption, he has become an object of hatred in Ukraine, and many people in the country have been demanding his resignation for some time. “Jermak away!” thousands of people chanted during anti-corruption protests in Kiev this summer.
No evidence has yet emerged of his possible involvement in the latest scandal, no charges have been brought against him yet. However, his role is highly controversial. — It's hard to imagine that Yermak didn't know about the corruption scandal, admitted Denis Trubetskoy, who follows events in Kiev as a political analyst.
Trubetskoy is not the only one who believes that Yermak must have known about the fraud because of his power. Opposition politicians even claim that Yermak belonged to a group of criminals and in overheard conversations he had the code name “Ali Baba”. However, no evidence is publicly known.
Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, at a meeting in Davos, January 14, 2024.PAP/EPA/GIAN EHRENZELLER
— If it turns out that Yermak is deeply involved in the corruption scandal, the presidential office will not be able to remain. And the consequences would not only be disastrous for Zelensky personally, but also for the possibility of ruling the entire country – said Trubetskoj, with whom “Die Welt” spoke before the announcement of Yermak's resignation.
Fight against corruption. “We need to clear up the scandal to clean up the system.”
One thing is certain: the corruption scandal is larger than previously thought. The investigation lasted 15 months and involved hundreds of hours of wiretapped conversations. So far, only a small part of them has been made public. — So the scale is clearly much, much larger. And it is probably not limited to the energy sector, said Daria Kaleniuk, the most famous anti-corruption activist in Ukraine. She expects further revelations of corruption in the awarding of defense contracts.
The power struggle between anti-corruption activists and part of Zelensky's government has been going on in Ukraine for some time. Nationwide protests in the summer were sparked by the then-planned law that was intended to deprive the anti-corruption body and its related prosecutor's office, SAPO, of power. Only when the protests intensified did Zelensky give up.
Kaleniuk believes that without this public pressure, she and others would have been imprisoned. She felt politically persecuted. — As long as Yermak is in office, the system will try with all its might to get rid of NABU and SAPO, but in a more sophisticated way than in the summer, she said even before announcing her resignation. — They will spread disinformation, discredit investigators and invent new allegations.
According to Kaleniuk, the authorities could also prosecute Oleksandr Klymenko, the head of SAPO, in a show trial. The activist added that Russia is forcing strategic corruption in Ukraine. —Russia can't defeat us militarily on the front, so their ideal way is to destroy us from the inside – said Kaleniuk. — We still need to clear up the scandal to clean up the system and become a much healthier country.
“Ukraine is fighting only not to lose the war”
While Zelensky is under pressure at home, the situation on the battlefield is also becoming increasingly difficult. In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has lost control of the long-besieged Pokrovsk in the east of the country. At the same time, Russian troops are advancing in the southeast in the Zaporozhye region and have recently conquered approximately 450 square kilometers per month.
A Ukrainian soldier carries an artillery shell that will be fired at Russian troop positions in the Pokrovsk area, November 20, 2025.Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform/PAP
The military situation reduces Ukraine's chances of reaching an agreementwhich would not amount to a dictatorial Russian-American peace. – The Russians know they have the advantage. Even if the territorial gains are small, the impression in Washington is that Ukraine is losing, says military analyst Gustav Gressel. The lack of soldiers at the front is one of the most serious problems. Recently, the army was barely able to occupy some sections of the front and therefore had to withdraw.
The acute shortage of staff on the front line raises the question of why the Ukrainian government made the controversial decision in the summer to… allowing men aged 18 to 22 to leave the country again. Since then, tens of thousands of people have left the country. Even though mobilization is only applicable from the age of 25, Ukraine relies on the talent and energy of these young people in key industries.
Critics say that it was primarily a political decision by Zelensky — after all, it was an especially large number of young adults who stood outside the president's office during protests against the government over the summer. Exhausted soldiers at the front feel this decision as an additional burden. The constant struggle is exhausting for them, especially since no fundamental changes are visible.
At best, the remaining core of motivated soldiers will be able to slow the steady territorial losses in the coming year. But in the worst case, Russia will achieve a major breakthroughwith the risk of collapse of Ukrainian defense lines. — Ukraine is fighting only not to lose the war, says Gressel.
However, the situation is not hopeless. According to representatives of German security circles, the Russian army would probably need it over a year to capture the remaining areas in eastern Ukrainian Donbas. This would again mean hundreds of thousands of dead and seriously wounded Russian soldiers.
But Zelensky must also adapt his military approach to the new reality. His most serious mistake was holding on to prestigious cities for too longsays Gressel. —Holding on to Pokrovsk for months costs reserves that would be urgently needed elsewhere. The result is Russian breakthroughs on other sections of the front: near Zaporozhye and Lyman. Pokrovsk cost Ukraine a lot of land
However, these forces are needed in the long term – not for symbolic political successes.
