DAILY MAIL ONLINE | Published March 11, 2025
US diplomats are sitting down in Saudi Arabia today for crucial Russia-Ukraine peace talks with a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, one of Kyiv’s most influential figures and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s closest confidant.
But analysts fear that Yermak’s presence at the negotiating table in the Saudi port city of Jeddah could well inflame tensions at a critical moment and may even jeopardise Kyiv‘s chances of securing a favourable peace deal.
That is because Donald Trump, who clearly harbours a notable distaste for Zelensky, is believed to foster similar feelings for his top aide.
Yermak, 53, was a central figure in the Hunter Biden scandal which saw Trump accused of pressuring Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden‘s family in exchange for military aid – allegations that led to the US president’s impeachment.
Ukrainian officials this week admitted they still think Trump bears ill will toward Yermak, though they hope Secretary for State Marco Rubio‘s presence will help to calm any tensions between the two delegations.
The potentially pivotal talks in Jeddah today come hours after Ukraine’s armed forces battered targets across Western Russia in one of the largest drone assaults of the war so far and Russia announced it had retaken some 100 square kilometres of territory in its Kursk region from Kyiv’s troops.
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Ukrainian Head of Presidential Office Andriy Yermak (centre) is leading ceasefire talks with US representatives in Saudi Arabia today
Yermak told reporters this morning ahead of his meeting with Rubio that Ukraine was ready to negotiate to end the war.
‘We are ready to do everything to achieve peace,’ Yermak said, before later taking to social media to declare that discussions with the US delegation had begun positively.
‘The meeting with the US team started very constructively, we continue our work.’
A former film producer and lawyer who first met Zelensky during his years as a comedian, Yermak has become the Ukrainian president’s right-hand man and now holds the power to negotiate directly with Washington in pursuit of a peace deal.
A firefighter looks on at a burning vehicle following Ukraine’s overnight drone attack on Moscow
An apartment in Moscow is set ablaze following a Ukrainian drone strike
Since Russia‘s full-scale invasion in 2022, Yermak has played a key role in Ukraine’s foreign policy operations, securing the release of Ukrainian prisoners, brokering arms shipments and working with the West to structure sanctions packages against Moscow.
Meanwhile, his close personal relationship with Zelensky has earned him the moniker of ‘St. Andriy, the First Apostle’ in Ukrainian media – but it is this proximity that some fear could prove a liability in discussions with the Trump administration.
Yermak had no political or diplomatic experience before he was granted an administrative role in Zelensky’s government in 2019.
His first significant brush with US politics came in July of that year, just three months after the Ukrainian president’s landslide election victory.
Yermak received a call from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, urging him to open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company under scrutiny for corruption.
At the time, Hunter Biden, son of then-US Vice President Joe Biden, was receiving $50,000 per month to sit on Burisma’s board, despite having no experience in the energy sector.
Giuliani and Trump were convinced that exposing wrongdoing at Burisma would damage Joe Biden’s political standing ahead of the 2020 election.
According to a Ukrainian official who spoke to the Telegraph, Yermak was ‘anxious not to be dragged into US domestic politics’ and advised Zelensky to hold off.
But his refusal to cooperate infuriated Giuliani and Trump.
Around the same time, the Trump administration chose to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid that was earmarked for supporting Zelensky’s forces in their fight against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.
The suspicious timing triggered allegations that Trump was trying to leverage Zelensky into a quid pro quo – continued military aid in exchange for a commitment to investigate alleged corruption by the Biden family.
The Ukrainian President never carried out Trump’s request, and allegations that Trump had tried to force Kyiv into investigating the Biden family led to his impeachment.
Although he was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, the episode reportedly deepened the US president’s animosity toward Zelensky, and by extension, Yermak.
‘Trump hates Ukraine,’ Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born US businessman who was once a fixer in Ukraine for Trump’s lawyer Giuliani, told Politico last year.
‘He and people around him believe that Ukraine was the cause of all Trump’s problems.’
But a Ukrainian government adviser told the Telegraph this week: ‘The anger isn’t just towards Zelensky – it is to Yermak, too.’
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak are pictured
Andriy Yermak (R) has spent years cultivating a close personal relationship with Ukraine’s leader
Russian forces published videos of their soldiers raising Russian flags above damaged buildings in Kursk
The wreckage of a Ukrainian armoured vehicle is seen in this image released by Russian forces in Kursk
Given the concerns that Trump continues to look down on Yermak as well as Zelensky, the decision to send him to Saudi Arabia to lead critical ceasefire talks has raised eyebrows.
But Yermak has long operated at the centre of Ukraine’s foreign policy machinery and Zelensky clearly believes his right-hand man is the best-equipped person to broker a peace deal that would prevent Kyiv from making catastrophic concessions to Moscow.
Yermak has been at Zelensky’s side since the very beginning of his presidency, having been granted a modest role as a personal assistant to the presidential office in 2019.
That role, seen as a fairly low-level administrative job, came with no official portfolio.
But Yermak saw the lack of a definitive job description as an opportunity and reportedly began consolidating outsized power by effectively becoming Zelensky’s constant shadow.
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SOURCE: www.dailymail.co.uk
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