Why Andriy Yermak has become toxic for Ukraine and why his resignation is a matter of National Security of Ukraine.

Vladyslav Smirnov reveals.

Andriy Yermak today is not just an official. He is the concentrated symbol of everything that has broken inside Ukraine’s government during the war. He is a shadow that has grown taller than the president. A man who has turned the state into a backstage theater, where decisions are made not by institutions, but by personal interests, grudges, and intrigues.

That is why the question “why won’t Zelenskyy fire Yermak?” is no longer the right one.

The correct question is: “why does Zelenskyy still allow Yermak to dismantle the state?”

The Mindich tapes showed the country not just corruption schemes — they revealed the real architecture of power. They captured how a parallel government exists in the shadows of the President’s Office. How “Ali-Baba,” recorded on those tapes, issues instructions, shapes decisions, promises to “fix things on Bankova,” comments on pressure on NABU and SAPO, and dictates who should work in state companies and on what terms. And no one doubts anymore who this “Ali-Baba” is. Journalists, ruling-party MPs, even Western diplomats understand that the talk is about Andriy Borysovych Yermak.

That is why the phrase “Yermak’s resignation could save Zelenskyy” now sounds not like a theory, but like a political diagnosis.

Yermak’s toxicity has long become an international risk factor. They don’t want to see him at negotiations. The scandal with Steven Witkoff — a trusted figure of Donald Trump — is a marker: even people with very questionable reputations refuse to stand next to Yermak in a photo because they don’t want to be associated with wartime corruption.

This is not gossip. Witkoff’s spokesperson told The Economist: “he did not understand the scale of the scandal when he agreed to the meeting.”

After that, the meeting was cancelled.

This is the moment when even controversial characters avoid Yermak – because his toxicity has reached a radioactive level.

This is his shadow super-structure, his private constitution, his hand-operated reality.

The Mindich tapes did not reveal a scheme. They revealed a system of power. A system where “Ali-Baba” gives instructions to law enforcement. Where “Ali-Baba” decides whom to target in NABU and SAPO. Where “Ali-Baba” holds informal “meetings” that weigh more than cabinet sessions.

The tapes do not mention a name, but in this country there is no one left who doesn’t know who it is about.

In the original tale, Ali Baba was a poor man who stumbled upon the treasure cave of bandits. Here – the opposite. Here the bandits stumbled upon the state.

And Yermak decided he could treat the state as his cave.

Everything of value – financial flows, tariff corridors, Energoatom contracts, defense budgets, procurement, tenders (even for the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant), media, the telethon, appointments, security agencies, anti-corruption bodies — all of it was pulled into the cave.
Not toward offices, procedures, institutions.

Into the cave.

Into a private center of gravitational power, where the shine of power is worth more than the state itself.

And the forty bandits in that cave are not a fairy tale.

This is the whole governing vertical.

Bandit-ministers who signed tenders without reading them.

Bandits in the energy sector who allowed state companies in 2022–2023 to supply goods to the Russian-occupied ZNPP.

Bandits in the defense sector who turned the front into a business plan.

Bandits in law enforcement who hunted not criminals, but NABU detectives when those detectives got too close to the cave entrance.

Bandit-advisers who don’t exist on paper but decide the fate of the state by phone.

Bandit-MPs who voted for a law destroying NABU and SAPO’s independence right when the anti-corruption bodies approached Yermak’s cave so closely he got scared of the light.

And at the center of all of them — Yermak-Ali-Baba.

He doesn’t need to “find” corruption — he cultivates it.

He doesn’t need to fight Zaluzhnyi – he simply decides who is allowed to have agency and who is not.
He doesn’t need to break anti-corruption bodies — he does it through MPs, law enforcement, media affiliates, and presidential signatures.

It was Yermak who turned the TV telethon into an instrument of controlling truth.

It was he who made Zelensky dependent on an informational capsule where nothing penetrates that might disrupt the cave’s comfort.

It was he who went to negotiate with Kozak at the moment Russia was completing preparations for invasion.

He convinced Zelenskyy “not to panic” and “not to listen to the Americans.”

He failed the Wagner operation.

He built a system where any detective who brings real evidence is considered an enemy of Bankova.
Like Ruslan Mahamedrasulov — the only one who entered the darkness with a flashlight.

And therefore was thrown into prison by order of the same bandits.

Today the entire cave is smoking.

A massive energy scandal costing tens of millions of dollars.

Mindich fled.

Ministers disappeared.

Grynchuk disappeared.

Galushchenko disappeared in NABU.

The NSDC cancels trips and meetings, pretending to control the situation.

And Yermak stands there as if nothing happened.

Western media have long seen what Ukrainians are not allowed to see through the telethon.

Financial Times writes about a “symbolic shadow over Zelensky.”

The Economist explains that Yermak’s toxicity has become a national-security factor.