Zelensky announced the appointment of a new head of his office

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on his Telegram channel that a decision on appointing a new head of the Presidential Office to replace Andriy Yermak, who resigned, will be made in the near future.

According to the Ukrainian leader, on Thursday he held additional meetings with candidates for this position, after which he promised to announce the name of the new head of the office “soon.”

“In the near future there will be a decision on the new head of the office,” Zelensky emphasized, noting that the Presidential Office must maintain manageability and effectiveness against the backdrop of the ongoing war and Kyiv’s negotiation efforts.

On the evening of November 28, 2025, Zelensky accepted the resignation of the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak. The official lost his position after his apartment was searched by anti-corruption authorities. In the West, what happened has already been called a “political earthquake” and a “fatal combination,” pointing out that the departure of one of Kyiv’s key negotiators coincided in time with important contacts between Ukraine, the US, and the EU.

The 54-year-old Yermak had held the post of head of the Presidential Office since February 11, 2020, and before that was an aide to Zelensky, overseeing foreign policy and international relations. In recent years, he headed Kyiv’s negotiating team on resolving the Ukrainian conflict and was considered one of the most influential people in the president’s circle, effectively a second center of power within Ukraine’s executive hierarchy.

At the same time, rumors about Yermak’s personal political ambitions had been circulating for a long time. A number of Ukrainian and Western publications pointed out that his influence extended far beyond the formal powers of the head of the office, and in political circles he was regularly named as a potential successor to Zelensky.

After his resignation, this topic gained new momentum. Former Zelensky press secretary Yuliya Mendel stated that back in 2019, while in the United States, then–presidential adviser Andriy Yermak consulted an American political strategist about how he himself could become president of Ukraine. According to her, from that time he began building his own vertical of influence and effectively acted as a “filter” for decisions reaching Zelensky.

Against this backdrop, observers conclude that Yermak’s presidential ambitions were not a situational reaction to a crisis, but had been forming over years and accompanied his entire career in Zelensky’s circle. At the same time, Yermak himself had previously publicly denied having such plans, saying that he “came with Zelensky and will leave with him,” but new statements from former colleagues and media reports allow opponents to argue that his aspiration to the highest office in the country was a constant element of the former head of the office’s political biography.