It’s been a difficult week for everyone in Kiev.
Electricity is only available intermittently. There are drone or missile attacks most nights. And the weather was gloomy.
For President Volodymyr Zelensky, this is particularly jarring. In the past seven days, he has lost his chief of staff, the Russians have claimed to have captured the strategic city of Pokrovsk, and the Americans have stepped up demands for humiliating territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
On Tuesday morning, opposition members of Ukraine’s parliament besieged the speaker’s chair, blocking Zelensky’s proposed budget and calling for the government’s resignation.
Publicly, the Ukrainian leader was unflappable: “Ukraine takes all diplomatic efforts with the utmost seriousness – we are committed to achieving real peace and guaranteed security,” he noted in his usual social media post on Tuesday after debriefing his negotiating team as they returned from talks with the Americans in Florida.
He then arrived in Ireland for his first official post-war visit.
But behind the scenes, Zelensky’s fate was being decided. Will he remain a war leader or, like Winston Churchill before him, end his premiership before peace breaks out?
Vladimir Zelensky and Andrei Yermak have been inseparable for years. The hard-line chief of staff left his post on Friday after anti-corruption officials raided his office, leaving a 6-foot-2-inch hole in the heart of the president’s government in Kiev.
Andrei Yermak (right) resigned as Zelensky’s chief of staff after anti-corruption officials raided Zelensky’s office – Gleb Garanich/Reuters
“Technically, yes [Zelensky can survive]”, said Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Kiev-based political think tank Penta. “Science shows that you can go on living without your right arm. “
Indeed, this political amputation was positive for the president in many ways, eliminating a potentially fatal domestic political crisis and satisfying the demands of a broad political constituency alienated by the uncouth Yermak.
But that doesn’t mean Zelensky won’t suffer for it.
Urkenergo’s alleged $100m (£75m) kickback scheme led to Yermak – who has denied wrongdoing and was not named a suspect in the investigation – damaging Zelensky’s reputation at home and being used for propaganda purposes by Russia.
But the most obvious blow will be to Zelensky’s authority. Yermak is an old friend from the entertainment industry during President Zelensky’s time, and his power comes from Zelensky’s own power.
His ouster is shocking proof that Ukraine’s leader himself is not inviolable.
The fact that foes such as former President Petro Poroshenko, opposition lawmakers and even some members of Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party feel confident enough to demand — and win — the loss of Yermak is just the latest sign that the informal political truce that has been in place since 2022 is under pressure.
On Tuesday morning, Poroshenko and his fellow European Solidarity MPs blocked the parliament speaker’s rostrum, returning to the raucous scenes familiar to peacetime Ukraine.
Former President Petro Poroshenko takes the podium of Ukraine’s parliament – AP
Perhaps more importantly, the fact that Zelensky’s authority is being challenged at the official level reflects his declining popularity with the wider public. The reality is that, privately, many Ukrainians complain about him.
The latest poll, released in October, showed that only a quarter of people thought he should stay in power after the war ended. Perhaps recognizing this, Zelensky himself said he would not seek re-election after the war. Unpublished internal polls reportedly show public trust in him has also plummeted in the wake of the corruption scandal.
So while Yermak’s ouster may stop this corruption now, it could also spread to threaten the president himself.
The political charge against Yermak was that he was a monopolist who systematically drove out any other official with an ounce of independent thought or personal prestige. The accusation predates the recent scandal that led to his ouster.
A source said a series of high-profile firings since the full-scale invasion began have been blamed on Yermak’s determination to take matters into his own hands.
Sources say Yermak is obsessed with having the final say on government matters – Danylo Antoniuk/Anadolu/Getty
At the same time, there are complaints that he has simply packed the presidential administration with people afraid to question him — and that his obsession with having the final say on everything means he has become a bottleneck on many key projects, including diplomatic outreach to the West.
“No one is crying about this, except maybe Yermak,” said Solomiia Bobrovska, a lawmaker from the opposition Holos party. Like many Ukrainian lawmakers, she believes Yermak set up a machine to bypass and neutralize parliament. She suggested that his successor might re-establish relations between the parliament on Kyiv’s Hrushevskoho Street and the presidential office on Bankova Street, a 10-minute walk away.
Fesenko said the real danger for Zelensky would come if anti-corruption investigators uncover evidence directly implicating him in a corruption scandal involving Ukrainian energy companies.
There is no suggestion that Zelensky himself is involved in this. But even so, we’re still realistic about who might be next. If Donald Trump can broker a peace deal, the issue could be resolved sooner rather than later.
However, while the war drags on (although peace negotiations are likely to last for years, if not decades), Ukraine will be unable to hold elections legally, let alone actually hold them.
Russia likes to pretend that this has rendered Zelensky illegitimate because he outlasted his peacetime term in the 2019 election. But this argument has little appeal to Ukrainian voters. Even Poroshenko still insists that Zelensky is the democratic and legitimate commander-in-chief.
Of course, democracy cannot be put on hold indefinitely. At some point, Ukraine may have to find a way to hold elections amid the fighting.
Former military chief Valery Zaluzhny is Zelensky’s only credible rival – Finnbarr Webster/Getty
The main beneficiary will be his only credible rival, former military chief (and now ambassador to London) Valery Zaluzhny. But for now Zaluzhny has remained conspicuously silent, limiting his public comments to bland columns about victory and the importance of continued support for the country.
This is perhaps why many in Kiev have begun talking about a compromise, a Churchillian government of national unity composed of members from all parties.
Yermak’s departure, they say, created an opportunity for the wartime administration to shift toward a more academic approach.
One former official said it wasn’t perfect. But it could at least address the democratic deficit over a longer period of time.
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