Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's chief of staff, has used his experience in the entertainment industry to lobby for all Western support for Kiev.
Whenever the White House needs to talk to representatives of Ukraine, they call Andriy Yermak. The 51-year-old man regularly speaks by phone with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the official considered the "special envoy" of the Joe Biden administration on the war in Ukraine.
Yermak’s official title is Chief of Staff of the President of Ukraine, but he often wears a green military uniform and a beard similar to Mr. Zelensky’s. He is trusted by the Ukrainian president with important tasks, from facilitating arms transfers from the United States and its allies to overseeing prisoner exchanges with Russia.
Chief of Staff of Ukrainian President Andriy Yermak, Mr. Zelensky's right-hand man. Photo: WSJ
He was actively involved in efforts to rally countries to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, regularly meeting with Western officials and meeting with celebrities to this end.
Yermak’s latest goal is to win support from countries that still maintain friendly relations with Russia. Part of the plan is to bring celebrities from Latin America to visit Kiev, as many Western stars have done since the conflict erupted last February.
“I am against formal diplomacy . It is dead,” Yermak said in a rare interview last month. “This is a new era. We need soft power. I need results.”
Yermak is seen as a micromanager who wields great power but always acts in concert with President Zelensky, the 45-year-old leader he has known for more than 10 years.
Wherever President Zelensky goes, from international meetings to visits to troops on the front lines, his chief of staff is by his side. Yermak downplays his role, saying his job is simply to support Ukraine’s leadership and that he is proud to have the president’s trust.
"Anyone who insults the President is my enemy," he declared.
Yermak met Zelensky in the early 2010s, when they were both working in the entertainment industry. Zelensky was then a comedian and a top producer for a Ukrainian TV channel. Yermak was an entertainment lawyer who worked for the country’s first law firm and wrote some of the earliest production contracts when Ukraine was newly independent from the Soviet Union.
The two men began to cultivate a friendship. When Zelensky won the presidency in 2019 on promises to fight corruption and end the war with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, he appointed Yermak as a senior adviser and then as his chief of staff in February 2020.
Yermak helped Zelensky handle requests from US President Donald Trump to investigate the son of Joe Biden, then a leading Democratic presidential candidate. He was also tasked with streamlining the cumbersome bureaucracy of the Ukrainian presidential office.
Yermak quickly built credibility with the West when he coordinated with US officials as well as individuals and private companies to evacuate civilians from Afghanistan on Ukrainian planes when the US withdrew its troops from the country in 2021.
In September 2021, President Zelensky and Yermak visited the White House, where they met with President Biden and national security adviser Sullivan. In Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky was struggling to fulfill his campaign promises, and Yermak became the focus of criticism as the president's approval ratings plummeted.
In late 2021, Russia massed tens of thousands of troops close to the Ukrainian border. Yermak led efforts to negotiate a deal with Moscow to prevent conflict from breaking out. Critics say Zelensky’s government has been wrong to prioritize peace talks over preparing for conflict.
Yermak still insists that a peaceful exit is the right choice, but Russia has chosen a different path. "When they failed to achieve everything through pressure during hours of negotiations, they sought it through military means on February 24, 2022," he said.
At the time Russia launched the war, President Zelensky and his top aides decided to stay in Kiev, even as Russian tanks closed in on the capital's outskirts.
Also present at the Ukrainian presidential palace that day was Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who was in Kiev to make a documentary about Mr. Zelensky’s transition from comedian to president.
Yermak invited Penn to Kiev and since then, the American actor has become a staunch supporter of Ukraine.
Mr Yermak and President Zelensky in Izyum, northeastern Ukraine, last year. Photo: Anadolu Agency
With their entertainment industry experience, Yermak and Zelensky soon agreed that they could reach out directly to Westerners to persuade them to support Ukraine. Yermak quickly used his public diplomacy experience to portray Ukraine as David versus Goliath.
Many Hollywood stars have visited President Zelensky. Irish rock band U2 played in the Kiev metro. French actor Alain Delon interviewed the Ukrainian president in a rare television appearance last year.
Coppola, in his award speech last March, recounted his meeting with President Zelensky and called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop.
“This information wave has worked,” Mr. Zelensky said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “The more people see or read it, the bigger the information wave will be and the attention to Ukraine will not be lost.”
The Ukrainian president has appeared in a variety of forums, both in person and online, from a graduation ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in the US to the Glastonbury music festival in the UK.
President Zelensky's planned appearance at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy caused controversy within Prime Minister Giulia Meloni's coalition and was eventually replaced by a letter read by the host.
But Yermak said it was a success for Kiev because Antytila, a Ukrainian rock band, had the opportunity to perform a song about the war at the event. He said Prime Minister Meloni later praised the song when he met President Zelensky.
Yermak also pursued talks with Western allies to convince them to maintain billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
In the early weeks of the conflict, Yermak sent foreign officials photos of the aftermath of fighting to demonstrate why Kiev needed more powerful weapons. Yermak said most of his partners responded, a sign that they were ready to join Kiev.
Yermak said Sullivan had been frank with him about when the Biden administration was not ready to provide some of the weapons Ukraine wanted.
"We have different positions, but we are frank with each other," he stressed.
US officials describe the communication channel between Kiev and Washington as open and effective.
Now, Yermak is using a similar approach to try to get closer to countries with which Ukraine has not had close relations in the past.
Several countries have called for peace talks, but Yermak said Ukraine does not need a mediator because Russia has shown no signs of abandoning its campaign. Instead, Yermak wants to get countries like Brazil and India to back President Zelensky’s peace plan, which calls for Russian troops to withdraw from all Ukrainian territory. Yermak has spoken with senior officials from both countries to encourage them to attend a peace summit.
Yermak has been active on social media to find other targets, especially celebrities. One of them is Colombian singer Maluma, who has 63 million followers on Instagram, a huge potential audience for Ukraine's message.
“I don’t know this singer. It’s not my taste in music,” Yermak said. “But we need him.”
Vu Hoang (According to WSJ )
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