Yermak must go?
Who must go? Zelensky's parliamentary majority disintegrating. Operation NUG.
The walls are closing in for Mr Zelensky. My readers will know that I’ve been skeptical in the past about grand predictions of the president’s imminent fall. But things are looking different now.
The strategy isn’t new. Zelensky’s fate is to be reduced to the role of an impotent British queen. All his ministers must go. Ukraine’s parliament wants to take control from Zelensky’s plotting viziers in the President’s Office.
But Zelensky, at least so far, is to stay. The reason for such respect towards Zelensky is dictated by the war — the western partners fear that a total vacuum of power could lead to chaos and major Russian victories.
Anyway, it’s never really ministers that have mattered that much. The opposition knows it, hence their other demand — to remove the all-powerful head of Zelensky’s presidential administration, Andriy Yermak.
Yermak has been Ukraine’s most hated man ever since he was appointed in 2019. But despite the endless tsunami of abuse hurled at him by the giants of western media and their subcontractors in Ukraine, Yermak continuously strengthened his positions. That’s why I always try to keep an air of skepticism when discussing the fall of Yermak.
But this time, things seem different. Fedir Venislavsky, an influential and quite phlegmatic MP from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, summed up the change in the air. Venislavsky is an exceedingly dull and loyal party bureaucrat, generally refusing to engage in any political intrigues when summoned for his seemingly daily interview by Ukraine’s branch of Radio Free Europe, Radio Svoboda.
Today, Venislavsky acted quite differently. The cool, collected interviewer kept on grilling him whether he wanted Yermak to go. Wheezing for breath, Venislavsky nervously gasped out that he did. When asked whether it was true that much of the Servant of the People’s parliamentary fraction agreed, Venislavsky affirmed that ‘more than half’ want Yermak to go.
Many think that Yermak’s fate is to be decided this week. Zelensky announced yesterday that Thursday, November 20, would see a number of ‘several necessary legislative initiatives and principled quick decisions needed by our state’. In turn, oppositional MP Oleksiy Honcharenko interpreted this to mean that Yermak would be dismissed.
However, this still seems unlikely. Just a few hours ago, Yermak announced his participation in the negotiations Ukraine claims to be holding with representatives of Russia in Turkey:
Operation NUG
The walking fossils supposedly leading Ukraine’s parliamentary opposition, ex-president (2014-2019) Petro Poroshenko and ex-prime minister (2007-2010) Yuliiya Tymoshenko, are calling for a ‘national unity government’. They are joined by the ultra-atlanticist, ‘Sorosite’ party par excellence Holos.
I’ll call this operation NUG (National Unity Government) for short.
Below, you can see the brave NUGers block the parliamentary tribune yesterday. They are holding posters saying things like ‘THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION - A UNITY COALITION’.
Poroshenko’s ‘European Solidarity’ party and ‘Holos’ party first came out with the NUG demand on the 18th, and Tymoshenko’s ‘Fatherland’ party soon followed. Poroshenko has also been hard at work releasing TikToks where he, the Father of the Nation, dressed in his usual designer ‘peasant’ attire, explains why NUG is necessary:
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Amusingly, yesterday’s blocking of the parliamentary tribune by the brave NUGers meant that parliament wasn’t able to vote on the question meant to be decided - accepting the resignation of the two corrupt ministers named in the Myndich tapes. Perhaps NUG are also merely puppets manipulated by Zelensky’s corrupt friend Timur Myndich, now comfortably seated in his Tel Aviv apartment?
However, it should be noted that operation NUG is not necessarily identical with getting rid of Yermak. Yermak isn’t in the cabinet - he is head of Zelensky’s ‘Office of the President’, an institution with theoretically vague powers - hence, with unlimited powers.
Chosen by the president, the head of the Office is meant to merely be a secretary. In reality, every president in Ukraine’s history has had his own Yermak — an all-powerful grey cardinal. The scheming court vizier who micro-manages everything in the country.
And it is entirely possible that the existing cabinet, considered entirely curated by Yermak, could be replaced by a new cabinet which is just as loyal to Yermak, this once-unknown film producer.
One could even imagine a scenario where the ‘dismissed’ Yermak continues playing the decisive role in managing the country - just like his close friend Timur Myndich did. Though Myndich has never had any government post, last week’s cataclysmic tapes showed him deciding which ministers to appoint in his secret ‘back office’.
Let’s take a closer look at what the liberal opposition is saying. Holos’s NUG manifesto calls for ‘a complete and immediate reset… of the current leadership of the Presidential Office, starting with its head’. However, this is only the fifth point - the first few are all about a total reset of the cabinet of ministers.
But Holos is the extreme ‘Sorosite’ (ultra-neoliberal and western-funded) wing of the opposition to Zelensky. And even when it comes to the Sorosites, some point out that their boss, the dashing young Alexander Soros, is actually very good friends with Yermak.
There are also some who believe that the rest of the opposition is in cahoots with Yermak. MP Mariana Bezuhla, who until very recently was Yermak’s strongest soldier, now claims that Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party and Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party aim to merely change the irrelevant ministers while leaving Yermak in power:
In general, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the ‘opposition’ to Zelensky is mainly concerned with preening their feathers and coming up with impressive phrases.
For instance, they aren’t even satisfied with a government of mere ‘unity’. Yesterday, Poroshenko called for the formation of a new “national salvation government” composed of “patriots and specialists with impeccable reputations.” Like himself, naturally.
Still, Poroshenko’s party only wields 26 votes, and the allied, even more atlanticist (or ‘Sorosite’, depending on your taste) party Holos has 19 votes in the Rada (parliament). Tymoshenko’s party has 25 votes, making for a total of 70 votes in favor of drastically reshuffling the government. 226 votes are needed to vote through a decision.
Rada rebellion?
But Zelensky’s Servant of the People (SotP) party wields 237 members in parliament. And they aren’t happy.
Zelensky was the first president in Ukrainian history to possess a ‘mono-majority’ — his own party held enough seats in parliament to pass laws without needing coalitions. Now, this powerful weapon is disintegrating over the Mindich-Yermak issue.
