Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday chose intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov to be his top aide, replacing Andriy Yermak who was fired amid a corruption scandal.
“I had a meeting with Kyrylo Budanov and offered him the role of the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
Zelenskyy added Ukraine needed to focus more on security and defense.
“Kyrylo has specialized experience in these areas and sufficient strength to deliver results,” the president added.
Budanov, a laconic 39-year-old former special forces soldier who fought in Crimea and Donbas, said he had accepted the offer.
“We will continue to do what must be done — to strike the enemy, defend Ukraine, and work tirelessly toward a just peace,” he wrote.
Budanov has headed the defense ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, known as HUR, since 2020. He has been involved in negotiations of prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia and gained widespread popularity in Ukraine, being credited with operations inside Russia. Repeatedly targeted for assassination (along with his wife), he has polled higher than Zelenskyy in terms of public trust.
As head of the president’s office, Yermak had been Ukraine’s second-most powerful man and country’s top peace negotiator.
He was fired in November amid a graft scandal during which his house was raided. The scandal centered on a probe by anti-corruption agencies that revealed a prominent former business partner of Zelenskyy was allegedly involved in a plot to skim around $100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector.
The major political pitfall for Yermak — amid such a high-profile scandal — was that his adversaries accused him of having played a lead role in seeking to strip Ukraine’s NABU anti-corruption bureau of its independence just as it was looking into the energy corruption case.