"Ukraine will never compromise on its territorial integrity, and negotiations with Russia are impossible until its troops leave the territory of Ukraine," — the main message of Andriy Yermak's interview with the publication The Wall Street Journal.
Andriy Yermak, head of the administration of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi. The former lawyer and film producer is today the right hand of the President of Ukraine.
Often dressed in military green, like his boss, Yermak is entrusted with critical work, from increasing arms shipments from the US and its allies to overseeing prisoner exchanges with Moscow.
Yermak's last important step is cooperation with Brazil and India, which maintain friendly ties with Russia. Part of the plan: to invite celebrities from Latin America to Kyiv, as many Western stars have done since the invasion began last year.
"Official diplomacy does not work. She is dead," Yermak told The Wall Street Journal. "Now is a new time. Soft power is also necessary. We need results."
In the administration of the president of Ukraine and in foreign capitals, Yermak is seen as a micromanager who wields enormous power, but acts in close connection with Zelenskyi, whom he has known for more than ten years.
Wherever the president is, from international meetings to visits to frontline troops, his chief of staff is usually close by. Yermak downplays his own role, saying that his job is to support Zelensky and that he is proud of the president's trust.
"Whoever insults the president is my personal enemy," he said.
Yermak met Zelensky in the early 2010s, when they were both in show business. Zelensky, a comedian and TV actor, was a top producer of a Ukrainian TV channel. Yermak was an entertainment lawyer who worked for the first registered law firm in the country and wrote the first production contract when Ukraine was emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union and learning about capitalism.
They became friends. When Zelensky became president in 2019, promising to fight corruption and end the war with Russia in eastern Ukraine, he appointed Yermak as a senior adviser and promoted him to chief of staff in February 2020.
Yermak helped Zelensky fulfill the requests of the then US President Donald Trump regarding the opening of an investigation into the son of Joe Biden, who was then the main candidate of the Democratic Party. Zelensky emerged from the incident relatively unscathed.
Yermak tried to change the cumbersome bureaucratic apparatus of the presidential office. Today's interview took place not in the usual bright arrangement of an administrative building, but in a conference room with glass partitions, television screens and neon lights that read: “Time. Action. You." When read together, the sounds form a sentence: "It's time to act."
Yermak soon earned a reputation in the West when he worked with officials as well as individuals and companies, including The Wall Street Journal, to help evacuate people from Afghanistan on Ukrainian planes as the U.S. withdrew its forces and the Taliban seized control of the country.
In September 2021, Zelensky, accompanied by Yermak, visited the White House, where they met with President Biden and Sullivan. During the same trip, the Ukrainian delegation visited the director of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, at his winery in Napa Valley, California, where they spent several hours listening to Ukrainian music and talking about films.
In Ukraine, Zelenskyi struggled to fulfill his campaign promises, while Yermak became a lightning rod for criticism as the president's approval rating plummeted.
As Russia massed tens of thousands of troops around Ukraine in late 2021, Yermak made a last-ditch effort to find a deal with Russia and prevent an invasion. Critics say Zelenskyi's government has prioritized peace talks over preparations for war.
According to Yermak, it was the right choice to seek a peaceful solution, but Russia chose a different path.
"Everything they could not achieve by pressure during these hours of negotiations," he said, "they tried to achieve by military means on February 24, 2022," the day of the invasion.
Having a background in show business, Yermak and Zelenskyi soon came to the conclusion that they could directly appeal to the citizens of the West, whose governments are pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine. Yermak became the leader of public diplomacy, which uses the romance of the Ukrainian struggle of David and Goliath and Zelensky's charisma.
Hollywood actors came to see Zelenskyi in Kyiv. The Irish rock band U2 performed at the Kyiv metro station. French actor Alain Delon interviewed the President of Ukraine last year. Last March, during an awards ceremony, Coppola recalled his meeting with Zelenskyi and called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war.
"This information wave was effective," Yermak said in an interview. "And the more people who have a lot of followers, people who watch or read them will see it, the greater will be the wave of information and attention to Ukraine."
Zelensky has appeared at various forums via video link, from the opening ceremony at Johns Hopkins University to the Glastonbury music festival in England.
The president's planned appearance at a music festival in Sanremo, Italy, sparked grumbling among members of Prime Minister Georgia Maloney's coalition, who have a history of pro-Moscow sympathies, and was replaced by a letter read out by a late-night host.
But Yermak says that it was a success for Ukraine, because the Ukrainian rock group "Antitila" performed a song about the Ukrainian army's battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut. Maloney, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, later complimented the song at a meeting with Zelenskyi.
At the same time, Yermak is negotiating with allies to attract them and agree with them billions of dollars in military aid.
In the first weeks of the war, Yermak sent photos of Ukrainian bodies to foreign officials to demonstrate why Kyiv needed more powerful weapons. According to him, most of his colleagues responded that it contributed to their personal involvement.
Regarding Yermak's work with Sullivanon to supply Ukraine with weapons from the USA: "We have different positions, but we are honest with each other. He did a lot to support. But the most important thing is that he is very honest."
For their part, the US representatives called the channel of communication with the Ukrainian authorities open and effective.
Today, Yermak is using the same two-pronged approach to try to open relations with countries with which Ukraine has not had close ties in the past.
"Efforts to conclude an agreement with Russia on the eve of the war were hampered by the 2015 agreements, which were concluded under pressure from the West, according to which Moscow gained control over parts of the territory of Ukraine."
The governments of some countries are calling on Ukraine for peace talks, but Andriy Yermak believes that Ukraine does not need a mediator, as Putin shows no signs of abandoning his goal of taking over Ukraine.
Instead, Mr. Yermak wants to sway countries like Brazil and India to Ukraine's side to support Zelensky's peace plan, which involves the withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine. Talks are already underway with senior government officials in New Delhi and Brazil to urge them to attend the peace summit.
But Ukraine is currently at war, people are dying, and to quickly "conquer" Latin America, it will take more than diplomatic courtesy and shuffling official papers, he said.
Therefore, the work with famous personalities continues - one of them is the Colombian singer Maluma, who has 63 million followers on Instagram, this is a huge potential audience for supporting Ukraine and influencing the authorities of Latin American countries: "I don't know this singer. This is not my music. But we need him."
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