Andriy Yermak had ensured internal discipline in Ukraine’s wartime politics. He also led the country’s peace negotiations, which now must go on without him.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dismissal of his longtime right-hand man opens a window for a political overhaul that has been long deferred by the war in Ukraine. But it also injects uncertainty into Mr. Zelensky’s government at a delicate moment, leaving him without his key political enforcer as Ukraine is under pressure on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.
The departure of the aide, Andriy Yermak, on Friday amid a corruption investigation removes Ukraine’s lead negotiator from peace talks to end the largest war in Europe in generations. A Ukrainian delegation is scheduled to continue negotiations this weekend in the United States, now without Mr. Yermak, and Ukrainian officials insisted that the dynamics of the talks would not fundamentally change.
Mr. Yermak, a former movie producer who has been close to Mr. Zelensky for years, had been a sharp-elbowed and imperious political operative, ensuring such strict discipline in Ukraine’s competitive politics that opposition politicians and journalists accused him of repression and abuse. Many cheered his exit.
In diplomacy to end the war, too, Mr. Yermak seized a central role. He sidelined a former foreign minister who had good working relations with American and European governments. In the latest round of talks with the Trump administration, Mr. Zelensky had appointed Mr. Yermak to lead Ukraine’s delegation, despite a looming corruption investigation.
Mr. Yermak’s insistence on remaining, nearly always, physically close to the president had drawn notice both in Ukraine and in foreign capitals. A tall, strapping man, he struck an almost cartoonish contrast to the diminutive Mr. Zelensky in photographs when both appeared wearing matching green military-style clothing. In both the Trump and Biden administrations, Mr. Yermak had rubbed officials the wrong way, diplomats say.
Swapping out Ukraine’s top negotiator will not alter the weighty underlying issues of security for Ukraine and Europe in the talks.
“Negotiations are teamwork,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign policy committee in Ukraine’s Parliament. “If one person drops out, the mechanism doesn’t change.”
Mr. Zelensky has emphasized that negotiations are continuing apace. On social media on Saturday, he said that a Ukrainian delegation, led by Rustem Umerov, the head of the National Security and Defense Council, was “already on the way to the United States” for talks.
“Ukraine continues to work with the United States in the most constructive way possible,” Mr. Zelensky wrote. He added that he expected that the results of earlier negotiations in Geneva “will now be hammered out in the United States” during a meeting on Sunday.
Over the past week, Mr. Yermak had negotiated to soften a Trump administration proposal whose 28 points largely reflected Russian demands. These included withdrawing from territory in eastern Ukraine, forgoing NATO membership and ruling out a postwar Western peacekeeping force for Ukraine.
The proposal included a promise of security guarantees to prevent another Russian invasion that would be enforced in part by the United States, but without detailing the level of commitment to Ukraine’s defense. Ukrainians are wary.
Russia, which has seemed disinclined to make any concessions to Ukraine as it makes slow but steady gains on the battlefield, says it opposes European plans for a “reassurance force” inside Ukraine after any cease-fire. Ukraine, for its part, is resisting Russian demands to withdraw from territory in the eastern Donbas region that its military still controls, including the well-fortified cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk that Kyiv has defended since the war began in the east in 2014.
In announcing Mr. Yermak’s resignation, Mr. Zelensky said that his former aide had faithfully represented Ukrainian interests in talks but was being removed to avoid a “distraction.”
Detectives on Friday morning had searched Mr. Yermak’s home after charging figures close to both the president and Mr. Yermak with embezzling about $100 million from contractors to the state nuclear company, Energoatom, in a vast kickback scheme.
Mr. Zelensky himself has not been implicated in the corruption case and is not at risk of being ousted from the presidency. Martial law bans elections, and no significant political figures are calling for him to step down.
His top aide’s firing eases worries in Ukraine that Russia or the United States will use the corruption scandal as leverage to push Ukrainian officials to make painful concessions in talks. An opposition political party, European Solidarity, had issued a statement on Thursday demanding Mr. Yermak’s removal from the negotiating team for this reason.
Anticorruption activists say Mr. Yermak and another negotiator implicated in the corruption case, Mr. Umerov, who will now lead Ukraine’s delegation, faced conflicts of interest in negotiations over provisions in the peace plan, including a proposed amnesty for wartime crimes. Such a condition could cover the investigations targeting them.
The departure of Mr. Yermak is a seismic event in Ukraine’s wartime politics. By systematically sidelining rivals in the Cabinet of Ministers and the presidential office, he had won broad behind-the-scenes power. He was a vice president, a prime minister and a chief of staff rolled into one, seen as the most powerful unelected political figure in Ukraine since it became an independent nation in 1991.
Anticorruption activists cheered his firing. But Mr. Zelensky now faces questions over how, without Mr. Yermak, he will keep control over his party and government ministries in Ukraine’s pluralistic internal politics.
With Mr. Yermak no longer around to ride herd on domestic policy, keep a lid on power struggles within the military and oversee peace negotiations, Mr. Zelensky’s political control may weaken, analysts say. Mr. Zelensky has said he would consult with Ukrainian politicians and generals before appointing a replacement.
Before his top aide’s ouster, the political system under Mr. Zelensky had come to be known in Ukraine as Yermakshchina — the era of Yermak.
This arose from Mr. Zelensky’s dominance in elections in 2019. Key appointments to ministries and agencies became internal decisions within Mr. Zelensky’s team, rather than compromises hashed out with opposition parties.
Mr. Yermak held sway, doling out jobs and enforcing loyalty. He was also widely understood to control a powerful network of pro-government news channels on the Telegram messaging app, used to conduct smear campaigns against the government’s opponents and to promote Mr. Zelensky.
The corruption case that brought down Mr. Yermak has highlighted the role of money as a glue in Ukrainian politics. Ukraine’s presidents have used such favors to gain and maintain allies. Past scandals in previous administrations exposed political slush funds collected from wealthy businessmen or skimmed from state enterprises such as a natural gas company and a defense contractor.
Mr. Yermak’s predecessor as chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, in a 2021 interview all but admitted a continuation of the approach under Mr. Zelensky.
Speaking to a Ukrainian talk show host, Mr. Bohdan said that members of Parliament in Mr. Zelensky’s party were paid under-the-table bonuses for delivering votes. He called it an informal salary in “black money” and said it was raised from businesses, without specifying how.
Arrayed against corruption and other perceived misdeeds of the government is Ukraine’s civil society, a buzzing ecosystem of thousands of volunteer groups, nongovernmental organizations and online chat groups. Mr. Yermak’s firing represents a victory for this potent force in Ukrainian politics.
Underestimating the power of civil society has cost previous Ukrainian politicians dearly, including former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in street protests in 2014 after seeking closer ties with Russia.
Mr. Zelensky has been responsive. Mr. Yermak’s standing with Mr. Zelensky took a first hit over the summer, when the aide misread the public mood and pushed for a law that would limit the independence of anticorruption agencies.
Street protests erupted for the first time since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Mr. Zelensky quickly reversed course, with Mr. Yermak finding himself in a rare position: on the losing side of an internal debate.
Mr. Yermak indicated on Friday that there could be more twists to come after his sudden exit. In a text message exchange with The New York Post, he said he planned to join the military and fight the Russians.
“I’m going to the front,” Mr. Yermak wrote, The Post reported. “I am an honest and decent person.”
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.