Zelensky strikes back
Yermak forever. Disloyal spooks? Purging the party. Parliamentary rebellion.
If a cat has nine lives, then how many does Zelensky have? Very many.
November has been a momentous month. The new season of political turbulence was set off when the western-funded anti-corruption organs released evidence of massive corruption in Zelensky’s entourage on November 10.
The western media made a very good impression of shock. Back in 2021, the Open Society Foundation-funded Pandora Papers featured Zelensky heavily in their global analysis of offshore corruption. The country with the most politicians mentioned in the Papers was Ukraine. But I suppose that was oh so long ago…
The fury now, as usual since 2020, centers on Zelensky’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermak.
Over the past two weeks, reports have increased that Yermak was involved in the vast corruption scheme uncovered on November 10, popularly referred to as ‘Myndich-gate’. Timur Myndich, the man at the centre of the saga (currently in Israel), is a close friend of both Zelensky’s and Yermak’s.
Here’s the Financial Times 7 days ago giving some friendly personnel advice to its proudly independent Ukrainian partner:
Wartime condition have created new opportunities for corruption… Zelenskyy has amassed power at the pinnacle of the state under his omnipresent chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Under this time-honoured system, loyalty is rewarded over competence while tolerance for self-enrichment and the threat of a malicious secret services investigation are tools for keeping people in line.
Allowing law enforcement to run its course is imperative, but it will not be enough to contain the biggest political crisis of Zelenskyy’s presidency. He needs to change the way he rules. A government of national unity would be too dysfunctional but Zelenskyy should open it up to more talented modernisers, work with constructive opposition parties and stop treating rivals and independent media as traitors. Doing any of this will require clearing out his presidential office and removing advisers associated with abusive practices. Jettisoning Yermak, enforcer of the “power vertical” and now a lightning rod for public discontent, seems unavoidable.
Zelensky is happy to fulfill many of the desires of his voracious western partners. But removing Yermak is a red line. Back in 2021, when the western media and NATO-aligned forces at home were furiously accusing Yermak of being a corrupt Russian agent, Zelensky famously responded with the following:
Mr. Yermak is a truly powerful manager, not just in words, not blah blah blah, but a real patriot of Ukraine, who works very hard, 24/7, only for Ukraine.
He came with me, he will go with me… It’s not by chance that Yermak is by my side; I trust him.
Domestically, even those hitherto loyal to Ze-Yermak were threatening to break away last week. Zelensky’s Servant of the people party was straining at the seams, with influential parliamentary representatives stating for the first time ever that Yermak must go. MP Mariana Bezuhla, until now seen as Yermak’s fiercest loyalist, begun calling for his removal.
But as usual, a deux ex machina from abroad intervened to save Zelensky and his friends – Trump’s peace plan. This despicable peace plot thunderously erupted onto the scene on November 19.
The Ukrainian president has once again become the embattled David against the malevolent Trump-Putler Goliath.
Hence, it came as no surprise that Zelensky’s November 18 announcement on upcoming personnel changes had nothing to do with Yermak, as some had optimistically hoped.
Instead, Zelensky took Yermak with him to Turkey on November 19 to conduct negotiations with the Americans. Unfortunately for the wily Ukrainians, the Americans didn’t come — Axios reported US officials had realized that Ze-Yermak were playing their usual game of drastically editing the peace plan they’d been offered.
Finally, on November 22, the Ukrainian government web page officially announced the leader of its negotiation team in Switzerland - Andriy Borisovich Yermak.
A smart strategy — any attempts to tie Yermak to the ever-expanding Myndich corruption scandal would now be tantamount to treason. How could any patriot even think of sabotaging crucial peace talks by targeting the main negotiator!
This is how Ukraine’s premier liberal nationalist news source, Ukrainska Pravda, put it on the 24th:
“It saves him [Yermak] from charges,” one of the representatives of the presidential team immediately commented off the record on Zelensky’s decision.
On the 22nd, Zelensky took the time to chasten the Ukrainian public for worrying too much about corruption and not enough about wartime unity:
It’s necessary to pull ourselves together. Come to our senses. Stop the infighting. Stop the political games. The state must function. The parliament of a country at war must work in unity. The government of a country at war must work effectively. And all of us together must not forget or confuse who exactly is the enemy of Ukraine today.
The term for infighting he used, srach, is quite emotive. It comes from the word srat’ - to shit. Stop the shitting!
In short, emboldened by the international conjuncture, Zelensky has turned his sights to his domestic enemies. And it is these delightful court intrigues that we shall be contemplating today.
In short, Ze-Yermak have decided not to bend over in the face of the opposition, and are hard at work pushing the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) to level treason charges against their political enemies. This reportedly even includes the head of Zelensky’s parliamentary fraction, due to his excessive appetite for peace and closeness with the Americans. In turn, Zelensky’s parliamentary majority is unwilling to even vote for the 2026 budget.
Finally, I asked my old friend from Kiev what he thought of the current situation. Those uncomfortable with problematic slurs are advised to skip this section.
The Arakhamia problem
The past two weeks have seen numerous influential MPs in Zelensky’s Servant of the People (SotP) party call for Yermak’s removal. Both the MPs in question and Ukrainian media claim that half or more of the party is in favor of the step in order to preserve relations with the west and satisfy domestic political sentiment.
The ever-paranoid Yermak believes that there is a name behind this problem - David Arakhamia, the leader of the SotP parliamentary fraction. Ukrainska Pravda was already reporting on Arakhamia’s supposed manouevering against Yermak on November 18.
Indeed, the conflict between Yermak and Arakhamia has a long pedigree that I covered here. In short, it has long been fairly clear that Arakhamia is more willing to cooperate with the Americans in coming to a peace deal with Russia than the British-aligned Yermak. Arakhamia made a splash back in 2023, when he stated that it was the intervention of British PM Boris Johnson in March 2022 that wrecked the nascent peace deal. He even made a trip to Trump’s inauguration at the start of 2025 to advertise himself as a peace deal-maker.
Arakhamia’s own personal background surely plays a role here. While working as a tech entrepreneur in the US in the early 2000s, he became involved in the world’s largest cybercrime network - CarderPlanet. Its promotional material can be seen below. The term ‘Russian’ is somewhat of a misnomer, as all the leaders were from Ukraine (many did spent time in the 2000s living in Moscow, however).
Vladislav Horohorin, the founder of CarderPlanet, now works for Ukrainian military intelligence. He stated the obvious in interviews a few months back - Arakhamia cooperated with the FBI to avoid going behind bars. Horohorin knows what he’s talking about, as someone who left US jail after only 7 years by cooperating with the feds. Given the planetary scale of his crimes, quite something. Horohorin also has a background in Israeli military intelligence, by the way.
Anyway, after being visited by the FBI in 2002, Arakhamia soon found himself receiving lucrative contracts with the likes of Microsoft. By 2013, he decided to return to Ukraine, soon entering the new post-maidan government. A strange series of coincidences, no doubt.
More bluntly, he’s Washington’s man. Many believe he has a US passport. Ukraine’s Security Services even began investigating whether this was true back in December 2012, but I suppose that went nowhere…
Anyway, back to Arakhamia’s rather more difficult situation in the present.
Arakhamia attempted to publicly distance himself from calls by SotP MPs to remove Yermak on November 20. However, the publication strana.ua wrote the same day that Arakhamia is cooperating with the anti-Yermak group.
Hence, it came as no surprise when several reports emerged last week that Zelensky was set to remove Arakhamia from his position as head of the party.
