“Yermak made sure he was present at every meeting I had with Zelenskyy, listening, interjecting. Or Yermak would just sit there and scroll through his phone and show Zelenskyy something and crack a private joke with raised eyebrows. In time I just stopped going to meetings and communicated just by email,” he told POLITICO.
Center of power
Yermak quickly expanded his role and surrounded himself with people beholden to him, among them a coterie of unpaid advisers who owe allegiance solely to him. Some have been suspects in corruption cases, prematurely closed down on the orders of Oleh Tatarov, a key deputy in the presidential administration who reports to Yermak. Tatarov, a Ukrainian lawyer, worked in the interior ministry during the regime of Viktor Yanukovych but was dismissed after the Maidan uprising only to reappear in Bankova Street in 2022.
Few top officials have managed to cling on if Yermak has wanted them gone. One standout has been Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, who’s maintained independent access to Zelenskyy, say Bankova Street insiders, to the frustration of Yermak.
The purges and reshuffles have done nothing to ease long-standing worries about Zelenskyy’s highly personalized and, according to some, autocratic way of governing. Zelenskyy has little time for formal ways of governing or institutions. Everything is highly personal, improvised and often impetuous. “Zelenskyy and Yermak have undermined institutions, and they’ve developed governance based on people they trust,” Kniazhytskyi said.
The departures of some highly gifted figures from the cabinet or the military, including Dmytro Kuleba as foreign minister and Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the army commander who clashed with Zelenskyy over war strategy, have prompted domestic alarm. The monopolization of power has triggered quiet dismay of Western allies, who are reticent to issue public criticism for fear of handing propaganda openings for Moscow.
“We don’t have a proper functioning Cabinet of ministers. Instead, we have some quasi-Cabinet of ministers headed by Yermak, who controls access to the president’s agenda and to the president himself. Then you have all these strange advisers, who are not public officials, who are not on the state payroll, and who don’t have to submit asset declarations,” said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center NGO.