Yulia Mendel, former aide (2019-2021) to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, worked with Andriy Yermak (then head of the Presidential Office) during her last year in office. Mendel shared with Radio Liberty her thoughts on Yermak in Ukrainian politics and his influence on Zelenskyy.
Radio Liberty (RL) interviewed Yulia Mendel (YM) on Andriy Yermak.
RL – I read what you wrote on your social media about Mindichgate and Andriy Yermak’s dismissal, and you asked, perhaps rhetorically, whether it was a “carefully planned masterpiece” or a desperate reaction on the part of the president when he dismissed Yermak, or was it some kind of pressure on him? Please explain what you mean.
YM – You know, Vlasta, I listened carefully to what you said earlier and what Ukrainian soldiers said about Andriy Yermak.
And I must say that when I went to the front in 2022, I was very surprised that the first question the Ukrainian military asked me was: “Why doesn’t the President fire Yermak?” It was very odd and it means that this issue has been hanging in the air for many years.
– Today I can share the experience I have.
It seems to me that Andriy Borysovych has not completely given up his attempts to influence today’s politics. Because, let’s be frank, for the last few years he has been the “main Human Resources department”, and many people who are in power today are his loyal followers, his friends, people who made their careers thanks to him. Well, for example, the candidate for the Prime Minister of Ukraine – well, it’s definitely Andriy Borysovych’s person.
RL – People like Yulia Svyrydenko.
YM – Yes, Yulia Svyrydenko, ministers, people who participated in the negotiations in the USA?
There are people there who are very close to him, his friends, and so on.
We still have “telephone law”, and I think that Andriy Borysovych will do whatever it takes to further influence politics.
Since 2019, Andriy Borysovych has been building his own vertical of power. I know that he always said he only supported the president and didn’t care about anything else. But I think that these were also PR moves. And I’m not sure they were very successful, but to some extent, perhaps, they were.
I will share with you what I know.
In 2019, while in the USA, Andriy Yermak spoke with a political consultant and asked him how he could become president of the country.
So, Andriy Borysovych’s ambitions are quite impressive.
From another experience, as I will say, it is not only my personal experience, but I am sure that many high-ranking officials and civil servants, who have already left their positions, will confirm and recall, and hear, and agree that Andriy Borysovych very often misleads President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He presented information in a way that was beneficial to him, or in a way he interpreted it.
In addition, many officials repeatedly received calls from Andriy Borysovych with a request not to do the task that Volodymyr Oleksandrovych – Volodymyr Zelensky – asked them to do.
I do not want to absolve officials, politicians, and people involved in Mindichgate of responsibility . Everyone is responsible for themselves.
But when it comes to Andriy Yermak, he was probably the most dangerous person in the current power structure and remains so today. And I think he will do his best to return.
For example, so as not to be vague, I received calls when Volodymyr Zelensky asked me for something, I started to do it and half an hour or an hour later I received a call from Andriy Borysovych, who asked why I was doing it and told me not to do it.
RL – For example, Yulia, what was it?
YM – Well, I can’t remember the technical details now, but they were definitely calls in which he forbade doing something.
And I know from talking to other officials that he blocked the work of law enforcement agencies, blocked procurement…, there were many other blockages.
Editor’s note: “I am going to the front and am ready for any reprisals. I am an honest and decent person,” Andriy Yermak said to New York Post immediately after his resignation on November 29.
RL – I will clarify for our audience: Andriy Yermak was appointed to the position in February 2020. You resigned from the Office of the President as press secretary in July 2021. So you worked together for some time. And what you are saying now is from your experience, right?
YM – It was both my experience and the experience of the people who remained after me…
A lot of things happened exclusively via Andriy Yermak, he made decisions.
Back in 2021, I told journalists how it all happened: Andriy Yermak was like a filter for the president’s decisions.
That is, Volodymyr Zelensky has certain decisions, he brings them to Andriy Borysovych, and then everything goes on like this: whether Yermak wants to carry them out or not, whether they are beneficial to him to or not, whether he can or cannot…
He stops the order and then most politicians and officials simply find themselves in a trap: they cannot go against Andriy Borysovych. They cannot do what he forbids them to do. However, when it comes to, for example, the president asking why something was not done or why it was done incorrectly, they are held responsible. And Andriy Borysovych always points to someone who is to blame.
And if everything happens via Andriy Borysovych, then why do we see so many negative decisions and failures in politics? But it is others who are blamed – advisors, deputy ministers, ministers, or anyone else.
Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Oleg Tatarov and Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak at the graduation ceremony for cadets of higher education institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kyiv, April 12, 2023
But the key issue is that for a very long time, since late 2020, everything in the Presidential Office has been done to please Andriy Borysovych and to do what President Zelensky wants.
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych is sure that Andriy Borysovych is his right-hand man, but it is not so.
Believe me, I am scared.
I understand that no one will believe this now, but every day I pray and thank God that I am alive. Because Andriy Borysovych is a very dangerous person, very dangerous.
Those who know him will understand.
RL –Are you afraid of what he may do to you, excuse me?
YM – Well, look, starting with the basics: a smear campaign, political technologies launched against those who oppose Andriy Borysovych – either pro-Russian, or… a “traitor”, or something else, and ending with the fact that he has a certain influence on law enforcement agencies, and criminal proceedings are created there just out of thin air.
“Treason” out of thin air and so on, and so on, and so on.
I saw one official walking by, her hands were shaking, she was crying, and she said: “Yulia, this is not how people can be treated.”
And believe me: a lot of people’s lives were destroyed because of Borysovych.
RL – But, Yulia, just a minute, look, we all know and remember perfectly well when Volodymyr Zelensky said that Yermak does what I tell him, he is my assistant, he carries out my tasks. Now what you said seemed to me like you were trying to separate Yermak from the president, but aren’t they a single entity?
YM – I think that, to a certain extent, they are a single entity, until it comes to Andriy Yermak’s own interests.
Perhaps what I am saying now will be a revelation for Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself. Therefore, if he hears everything, perhaps he will simply review analytically what happened.
I am giving this interview because I hope that I will be heard.
It’s heartbreaking that the war has been going on for four years, and Yermak has been the chief negotiator until now, and we have all forgotten that until 2022, Andriy Yermak was also the chief negotiator with Russia, and that it was he who convinced Volodymyr Zelensky that there would be no full-scale invasion.
I don’t really understand how he can be the chief negotiator now. Especially considering that the West has not trusted him for a very long time.
Editor’s note: The resignation of Andriy Yermak, who previously headed the Ukrainian delegation in the peace talks, took place against the backdrop of a search by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). Yermak stated that ‘there were no obstacles for the investigators’ and that ‘they were given full access to the apartment.’ Since then, no charges have been brought against the former civil servant, who may have been involved in the Midas case.
RL – Why do you think Andriy Yermak convinced Volodymyr Zelensky that there would be no invasion? The media wrote about this, but…
YM – I have no doubt about it. I don’t get my information from the media; I still have many connections, and I am absolutely sure that this was the case, because I heard it from more than one person who is closely involved… in what is happening.
RL – Why would Andriy Yermak need to convince the president?
YM – I don’t know, ask Andriy Yermak.
Of course, he will say that this is not true, but I think that maybe he believed it himself, I don’t know.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the country could have prepared much better for what was happening, and I travelled a lot during the war, including in the border region, and I understood that many attempts to prepare the country, protect the borders, build some fortifications, conduct additional training for the military – they were all blocked because Andriy Yermak said there would be no war.
“There’s no need to panic, there’s no need to panic,” remember all that was happening. I think that’s the most important thing.
Besides, I have other examples that are not related to the war, when Andriy Borysovych simply made something up and imposed…
I repeat, I do not want to absolve those people who are currently in power of responsibility if they are involved in something, and it is up to the law enforcement agencies.
We all want the courts to work and the guilty to be punished.
Moreover, if you calculate what $100 million, which is suspected to have been stolen from the Ukrainian budget, is worth, it would be possible to pay 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers 10,000 dollars each and thus create a kind of incentive system for them to sign a contract rather than catching people, putting them in buses, violating their human rights and creating all this horror.
If we find out about the money that was taken out, then corruption actually ate away all motivation, created that chaos and people’s unwillingness to go to war, mistrust between the authorities and mistrust between society.
I can tell you about another example.
Do you remember Wagnergate in 2020? Everyone has probably forgotten about it.
RL – We remember.
YM – Well, let me remind you: Andriy Borysovych was at the centre of the scandal, and…
– I remember that we were with Volodymyr Zelensky, and Andriy Yermak came in, and the president asked him why the foreign press, Bellingcat, was writing about it. It is very well known all over the world. And Andriy Borysovych said that he knew why they were writing about it, and, just don’t laugh out loud, he said that he was ‘1000%’ sure that they were attacking Yermak himself, because Bellingcat had been bought out by Armenia, whatever that meant, because legally it was impossible, and de facto it was also impossible.
I asked him how sure he was about this, and he shouted, waved his arms and shouted about ‘1000%’, but this is one of those striking cases when information is presented in a completely nonsensical and conspiratorial way.
RL – Does the president believe this?
YM – Volodymyr Zelensky may not have known that the legal structure of Bellingcat is a public organization and that these are journalists working in different countries, but it is simply impossible to buy them out de jure.
RL – As his spokesperson, couldn’t you tell him?
YM – I tried to convey the information as best I could.
But I’ll be honest with you, anyone who says something that Andriy Yermak doesn’t like… I’m serious, don’t you understand how influential this man is?
Well, most people… well, some were fired, some were dismissed, some had criminal proceedings opened against them, some simply had their image destroyed. Well, I mean, it’s horrible.
You simply cannot imagine the scale of it.
RL – Can we go back a little? You said that in 2019, Andriy Yermak asked a political strategist in the United States how he could become president?
YM – That’s right.
RL – What’s the story behind that?
YM – The political strategist did not get the impression that Yermak was joking.
But Andriy Borysovych is also very sensitive to the fact that the media somehow ignored him, and for him, the media component is extremely important so that they cover him and cover him from a positive point of view.
And even during the full-scale invasion, I know that at one point there was a rule, which, I am sure that Volodymyr Zelensky is not aware of, that for international media to obtain an interview with President Zelensky, or an exclusive comment, or, for example, some video address, they had to first obtain a comment or an interview from Yermak and write something favorable about him.
And if they did, then they passed this filter, and then they could… it’s a great opportunity to get an interview with the president.
RL – Was it a written rule, an informal rule?
YM – No. It was an unwritten rule that existed for a certain period of time. I think it was in 2022, 2023, and maybe even in 2024.
But this is completely against any freedom of speech, against any rules.
I learned about this from many sources, even from different continents, and I have absolutely no doubt that this was the case.
This coincided with what was evident in publications and broadcasts.
RL – Nevertheless, you have just described how close Zelensky and Yermak were, as you perceived it. What do you think was the final straw that led the President to dismiss his powerful manager? He did it on the day of the searches, but we know that the search warrant was issued earlier… Did the President at least suspect that there might be suspicions or searches? What was the final straw? What do you think?
TM – We can theorize all we want.
As far as I understand, Volodymyr Zelensky consulted with people close to him and did not find support for keeping Andriy Yermak.
And as far as I understand, Andriy Yermak has long been distrusted by many Western administrations – not only in the United States, but also in the European Union.
I know, for example, that some European Union leaders asked to meet separately with Volodymyr Zelensky, without Andriy Yermak, because they considered Andriy Yermak’s influence to be unconstructive or even destructive. They found it impossible to negotiate with him.
Therefore, I think that now, when peace negotiations are at stake and there is a chance for peace, these negotiations must be conducted as effectively as possible. And, apparently, the question arose that it was necessary to change the head of the delegation and change the way information is presented both from and to Ukraine.
Editor’s note: In her book “Each of Us Is the President” (2021), Yulia Mendel wrote, “Andriy Yermak was given too serious a negative image […] As the second person in the state, he took on responsibility for numerous political crises […] It is hard to imagine a more devoted person to the stated goals with more original approaches.” Yulia Mendel also wrote in her book, “If two Andriys who led the Office of the President were to be seen together, it would be a spectacle not for the faint-hearted. Seeing Yermak, Bohdan (Zelensky dismissed Andriy Bohdan from the post of Head of the Presidential Office on 11 February 2020 – ed.) turned into a crude lumpen who shouts proposals that are incompatible with logic. Yermak kept silent, behaving like a noble aristocrat, only occasionally reacting to the madness of his namesake. For example, during a flight to the United States that lasted over 10 hours.”
Radio Liberty is ready to hear Andriy Yermak’s opinion and give him the opportunity to express his position.
