How damaging could the Ukraine corruption scandal be for Zelensky?

Andriy Yermak, the cryptic aide who shadowed Volodymyr Zelensky through every phase of the war, resigned Friday after anti-corruption investigators searched his office and house. Yermak was the center of Zelensky’s wartime team – and the consequences of his resignation could be far reaching. 

In an evening address, Zelensky thanked Yermak for representing Ukraine’s negotiating position in recent tense talks with the United States, “as it should be” and stressed that it had “always been patriotic,” while urging Ukrainians to ignore rumors around the resignation. He said he would begin consultations on a new chief of staff immediately. With more talks looming, he underlined that, in wartime, every institution must stay focused on defending the state. Meetings with the American side, he added, are expected in the coming days. 

But Yermak rarely acted on his own; he was, in many ways, an extension of Zelensky. He handled the tough, unappealing tasks for the wartime president. He appeared to control the President’s decisions, because the President wanted it so. “Firing him feels like prosecuting his own actions,” an official  said. “On a personal level, it feels like a betrayal because half of Yermak’s actions come from the President,” he added. 

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Yermak followed Zelensky from bunker meetings to front-line inspections and wielded enormous influence behind closed doors. Over the years, his controlling nature earned him disdain across the board. “He’s a control freak with a psychopathic nature, a maniac for power,” said a senior Ukrainian official. “Letting him go gives a second chance for the President to reset everything.”

For years, both Washington and Brussels have pressed Zelensky to move Yermak aside, convinced that the presidential chief of staff exercised an outsize, often questionable influence over the country’s wartime decision-making. The drive to push out Yermak peaked last week as a major corruption scandal blew open in Kyiv. The probe alleges a $100 million kick-back scheme inside state-run energy company Energoatom, involving senior officials and Zelensky’s close allies. Yermak, though not then directly implicated, became the focal point of the backlash. 

Even Zelensky’s party, dormant up to now, rebelled against him last Thursday, urging the President to remove Yermak. Zelensky pushed back – only to reverse his decision a week later, when anti-corruption agencies came to Yermak himself and searched his home on Friday.

In July tensions flared when the government abruptly moved against the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a step widely read as an attempt to stop investigators who had begun circling too close to Bankova, the presidential administration. This was followed by largest public protests since the war, diplomatic pushback and a very clear signal that the move had gone too far. Within days, the administration reversed course. Officials have now confirmed that the government’s summer attempt to bring NABU under control was connected to an effort to contain the same investigations that have now broken into the open. 

Within Zelensky’s team, some have suggested that the pressure to remove Yermak is coming from the United States, where the FBI has been quietly coordinating with NABU on the corruption investigations. They say the Energoatom case was only the first of four probes expected to surface. “Everybody around Zelensky understands that the President cannot survive the next episodes without giving a sacrifice,” one official said. That sacrifice, allies told the President, must have been Yermak. By that point, Yermak had isolated himself so much that he was left with no real supporters besides Zelensky himself.

“Mr. Yermak’s resignation as Chief of Staff allows for a much-needed political reset at a critical time in the negotiations over Ukraine’s future,” Michael Carpenter, former NSC senior director for Europe under the Biden administration, told The Spectator. He praised the investigation for looking into allegations about Zelensky’s “core team.” 

To his detriment, Yermak united people who otherwise would not work together. People really hate him. Even those who owe him everything say he’s impossible to deal with”, the source noted.

The way Yermak ran things looked very familiar to anyone who knows post-Soviet politics. It was all about loyalty, personal ties and small clans competing for influence. But this isn’t just a Yermak problem. These old habits never really disappeared in Ukraine, even as a war raged. 

Ukrainians perceive Zelensky as different from much of his team. They do not view him as corrupt – and many believe he genuinely wants to do the right thing. But after so many years of being let down by the state and system, there’s a real sense of resignation that not even a total war can fully change how politics work. And if things stay as they are, it’s only a matter of time before the blame stops with Yermak and lands on Zelensky.