The Issue Is Not Yermak. Things Are Getting Worse

The Issue Is Not Yermak. Things Are Getting Worse

Lies, cynicism, and rudeness have become the calling card of the President’s Office. This has already cost Ukrainians dearly.

The ultimatum from U.S. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz to the Office of the President of Ukraine—"either Yermak, or support from the U.S. Congress"—was entirely predictable. This circle around Zelensky treats everyone else as fools and “suckers,” but you can’t do that with America. It will hurt.

The list of Spartz’s grievances addressed to the Ukrainian authorities has long been familiar to Ukrainians:

- wild disorder in public administration, made worse under the conditions of the fiercest war (which, by the way, was in many ways provoked by this disorder);

- Vladimir Zelensky’s infantile and barbaric personnel policy, by which he delegated all appointments to responsible state positions, including regional heads, to his head of office, Andriy Yermak;

- failure to prepare for a large-scale war (they simply did not prepare!), which resulted in the occupation of one-fifth of the country’s territory.

More detail on the last point. Here’s what Zelensky’s “and in May we’ll be grilling shashlik” stance looks like.

Within days under occupation was territory with a population of almost 10 million people (!)

The enemy seized a quarter of arable land. Two nuclear power plants (including Europe’s largest, Zaporizhzhia), and only thanks to the heroism of the military and territorial defense forces was the South Ukraine NPP not captured.

Within a single day the enemy took control of the entire lower Dnipro River, all Azov ports and parts of the Black Sea ports, and blocked all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

The enemy quite quickly filled the Crimean canals with Dnipro water.

The enemy effortlessly surrounded Mariupol and later took captive by numbers two brigades of Ukraine’s most combat-capable forces, including the legendary “Azov.”

Most of Chernihiv region, parts of Sumy and Kyiv regions suffered barbaric looting — as it turned out, NOBODY prepared Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv for defense. Fortifications and defensive positions were hastily created only after the full-scale invasion, by the military and territorial communities who came to their aid.

As a result of the outrageous, criminal irresponsibility of President Volodymyr Zelensky personally and the Office of the President (the latter cynically concentrated unlimited power in its hands, contrary to the modest functions prescribed by law for ensuring the president’s work) — tens of thousands of civilians killed, millions of Ukrainians who ended up in occupation after naively trusting the authorities. The loss of a number of combat-ready units. Unimpeded enemy seizure of strategic roads and bridges across the Crimean isthmus and the Dnipro, loss of a number of strategically important enterprises.

The list is far from complete; every family, I’m sure, already has its own tally not only against the enemy but also against the people who, possessing full information about the impending attack and warned by allies, deliberately delayed creating territorial defense forces, arming them, and training them. Also — for two years they sabotaged the state defense order, didn’t procure a single shell for the army, not a single “Stugna,” and not even military uniforms, body armor, or rations (the latter were absent from warehouses).

As a result, territorial communities helped—and still help—feed military units in the combat zone!

And against this backdrop, Ukrainska Pravda reports that at all National Security and Defense Council and presidential meetings the head of the president’s office, Andriy Yermak, always denied the possibility of a Russian attack, vigorously standing by his view. Clearly, Yermak’s position was obligatory for the President’s Office, for the “pocket” Cabinet, and for the same NSDC (shortly before the full-scale invasion, the NSDC expelled combat-ready General Serhiy Kryvonos, who warned of the inevitability of a large war with Russia!) — it was unquestionable and guided all subsequent planning across the power vertical.

Meanwhile, Yermak’s very person and biography make it impossible for him to hold not only the head post of the President’s Office but any public service position at all.

Son of a career Russian GRU intelligence officer. Assistant to the “Party of Regions” MP Elbrus Tadeiev, a member of the organized criminal group of Borys Savlokhov (more about the gang here, here, and here:

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 1

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 2

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 3

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 4

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 5

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 6

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 7

The Savlokhov Brothers’ Gang. Part 8).

In other words, Andriy Yermak, the son of a Russian intelligence officer with proven ties to persons in Putin’s circle, was also an assistant (lawyer, attorney) to a gangster who repeatedly demonstrated his criminal status by participating in violent “settlements.” Moreover, that gangster held a clear anti-Ukrainian position. To have been that person’s assistant for three parliamentary terms requires a particular set of moral-ethical attitudes, upbringing, and mentality.

In the 1990-s such characters were called by UBOP officers a “bandit’s fosterling.”

The presence of just these two “markers” in his biography should have precluded A. Yermak from entering public service — he could not and cannot pass an SBU special background check. But he did pass it and gained access to the state’s highest secrets!

And that’s because the SBU was headed by another scoundrel — Ivan Bakanov, a personal friend of President Zelensky, who was granted the rank of lieutenant by presidential decree only so he could take that high post.

Yermak was not alone — under the leadership of scoundrel Bakanov, another “outstanding figure” from Zelensky’s circle passed the special check: Alexander Gogilashvili, deputy minister of internal affairs of Ukraine, who is a citizen of the Russian Federation and the husband of the president’s personal aide Maria Levchenko.

Read more about this fraudster, criminal, and obvious FSB agent in the “Argument” article “Biography of Gogilashvili — a slap in the face to SBU counterintelligence.”

These are only two examples of Bakanov’s professional incompetence. Not enough?

Here’s a third: Bakanov’s own deputy — his friend and the department head of SBU internal security appointed by him, Andriy Naumov, is currently wanted for smuggling and “on the run,” detained in Serbia with a literal suitcase of gold, but whether Ukraine will get him back is a big question. Naumov had access to personnel records in the SBU and could easily end up in Russia, with the personnel files, of course.

By the way, why Bakanov is a scoundrel.

The same Ukrainska Pravda reports that the SBU head simply... disappeared from the service in the first weeks of Russia’s large-scale invasion. He reappeared only when the situation on the fronts stabilized. In the context of Lieutenant Bakanov’s behavior, the lightning-fast successful evacuation of 1500 (one and a half thousand) SBU employees in Kherson region, surrendered to the enemy with minimal resistance, looks logical. Marching “in a flash” from Kherson all the way to the border in Chernivtsi, the damn “chekists” generously left the enemy the bridges across the Crimean isthmus and the Dnipro, and everything else too...

At the same time, today these cowards are trying to prove the usefulness of their existence by committing yet another meanness — against those they cynically abandoned in the occupation, left alone with the enemy.

Clearly, the professionally incompetent coward and opportunist Ivan Bakanov, and the latent traitor and thief Alexander Naumov never intended to subject not only Yermak but any of Zelensky’s favorites to a real special background check. So the Office of the President predictably became the center of leaks of the state’s most secret information. And also — a center for spreading false, deliberately deceitful information that poses mortal danger to the State of Ukraine and millions of Ukrainians.

The public, brazen, criminal lies of the President’s Office about the absence of a threat of a large-scale Russian invasion and, as a consequence, the deliberate unpreparedness of the security forces cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. The war caught them unawares, unarmed, and defenseless.

And those responsible must answer not “tomorrow, when the war ends,” but today — so this does not repeat again and again.

But let’s return to Yermak’s personality and his antics.

By the way, his protégé Andriy Taran spent a year and a half ruining the work of the Ministry of Defense while serving as defense minister, until after a series of scandals, including corruption ones, he was dismissed from the post in November of 2021. In particular, he is personally responsible for sabotaging the state defense order and collapsing the army’s food supply system. After the Russian invasion in May of 2022 he was sent on an honorable pension as ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia. Meanwhile, the army, left without warehouse stocks even of uniforms, fought exhausting battles for a third month. By the way, Andriy Taran is close to another “prominent chekist” with a Russian “trail” and Kremlin ties — former SBU head Ihor Smeshko (more about this Russian agent in the publication “Spy Smeshko slept through: ‘Honcharov’s gang,’ ‘Kolchuga,’ Gongadze’s murder”). He even headed Smeshko’s election headquarters for the “Strength and Honor” party in 2019.

Yermak sure knows how to pick personnel!

The same story with Yermak’s deputy Oleg Tatarov. A moral degenerate, corrupt official, liar, and Russophobe finds the warmest support and protection in the President’s Office, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the “pocket” State Bureau of Investigations (DBR). In defending this scoundrel, who is responsible for impunity in the killings and torture of Maidan protesters and today controls the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor’s office, the DBR and even partially the SBU, the leadership of almost all security agencies was involved. Meanwhile, NABU proved this degenerate’s guilt in corruption — the former head of the Main Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs robbed, with accomplices, yesterday’s colleagues — officers of the National Guard! And today, while Ukrainians die by the hundreds daily on the front and at home at the hands of Russian occupiers, the ethnically and ideologically Russian Tatarov mocks the living and the dead by placing his kind across the entire vertical of “law enforcement” structures.

The result of Yermak and company’s frankly anti-Ukrainian stance: today almost all law enforcement agencies in Ukraine are headed by ethnic Russians: SBU — Ivan Bakanov, DBR — Oleksiy Sukhachov, MIA — Denys Monastyrskyi, Prosecutor General’s Office — Iryna Venediktova. Only the State Security Service of Ukraine (BEB) is headed by a man with a Ukrainian surname, Melnyk. But his appointment to the post bears all the signs of a scam. A scam, as in the appointment of the head of the DBR, organized by the criminal tandem Yermak–Tatarov.

And here is a clear example of sabotage resulting from the Yermak–Tatarov pairing: Sukhachov, fraudulently pushed into the position of head of the State Bureau of Investigations by them, on the night of 24 February, just 2,5 hours before the Russian invasion (so the leadership at the top knew exactly when the Russian invasion would happen!), ordered subordinates to destroy the evidentiary base in 140 of the most high-profile criminal proceedings in the state. Including the “Medvedchuk cases” and those concerning those responsible for the seizure of Crimea in 2014 among the country’s top officials. Which was done. And already on the day 24, in Khmelnytskyi, where the GBI leadership and bureau archives were successfully evacuated, Sukhachov continued destroying documents — in deep rear, where nothing threatened them. Now, with the highest probability, these criminal proceedings will collapse in court due to the lack of proper evidence.

Once again — this is sabotage against the State.

Clearly, O. Sukhachov (what a Ukrainian surname!) would never have dared to do this on his own initiative — it was an instruction from above. And “above” — Yermak and Tatarov. And the latter, while heading the Main Investigative Department of the MIA during the Maidan, fabricated and ruined dozens of cases; he is a known expert in this matter.

The recent appointment of the deeply amoral Dmytro Lubinets as ombudsman at the behest of the same Office of the President, even involving rewriting the law for this scoundrel, is from the same opera. It’s a clear signal that the President’s Office intends to violate human rights in Ukraine in the future, and to conceal these violations it needs “its own person” as ombudsman — even one with criminal thinking and a background as a fraudster.

Yermak’s openly criminal approach to selecting such boundlessly cynical criminal accomplices, and then committing crimes together in public administration — this is the current working style of the President’s Office of Ukraine. And this is being said not only in the Ukrainian political establishment, by heads of territorial communities and mayors of large cities, but also by ordinary Ukrainians. They want exhaustive answers to the questions of who allowed the instant occupation of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions — by name, from the very top.

Moreover, people’s determined desire not only to learn the truth but to punish those responsible for the deaths of their relatives and loved ones grows stronger by the minute. But the President’s Office carefully evades answering these questions.

Who sabotages competitions for the head of NABU, the appointment of the head of the SAP, who falsified competitions for the heads of the DBR and BEB — this is well known in Kyiv, in the embassies of our Western allies, and in the intelligence services of the U.S., the U.K., France, and Germany: Yermak and his subordinate Tatarov.

Hiding behind the war, Yermak and Tatarov cynically wipe their feet on Ukrainians, putting at risk Western aid to Ukraine.

The Office of the President, which in wartime lies not only to its citizens but also to strategic allies; the Office that fails to keep multiple promises made to them; the Office that unleashes armies of bots and “pocket” “journalists” to directly insult U.S. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, who demanded explanations — this is the behavior of a thieving gang caught “red-handed.” Here it is, the face of the President’s Office, its style and slang, the level of these scoundrels’ communication with allies — read it yourself!

And in light of all this filth, President Zelensky looks pitiable, unable to bring order even to his own secretariat. Zelensky, whether due to human weaknesses, medical or any other critical dependence on Yermak, is ready to trade the vital interests of millions of Ukrainians for a couple of obvious scoundrels from his inner circle.

Could the scoundrel, Russophobe Andriy Portnov have left Ukraine unimpeded at 48 years old without help from the President’s Office?

No! He left the country on 3 June, crossing the border into Hungary. And his conscription-age son from his first marriage did so even earlier — in 28 March.

Partners of Viktor Medvedchuk and friends of Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Ihor and Hryhoriy Surkis, who enriched themselves well over the last 30 years at Ukrainians’ expense, also freely left the country on 26 February. Moreover, the Surkis family managed to take not only three relatives of conscription age in their two cars, but also $17,6 million, which they did not declare on the Ukrainian side but did declare in Romania. After this scandal Hryhoriy Surkis returned to Kyiv, grabbed more luggage, and left the country again — astonishingly breaking rules, once more without hindrance!

Could he have done this without assistance from the President’s Office? Of course not! Because neither the leadership of the Border Guard Service nor the head of the MIA, Monastyrskyi, would assume such responsibility.

There you have the priorities of the President’s Office, Yermak, Tatarov, and Zelensky himself — the thieving Surkis family, their “redheads” and “cash.” And the place for Ukrainians — in the trenches, in the shot-up Buchas, Irpins, and Mariupols.

Today the country fights on two fronts — external and internal. The external enemy is obvious — Russia. The internal enemy is also obvious — the “fifth column” of traitors and thieves who parasitize on Ukrainians and their State.

We will defeat Russia only when Ukrainians remove from power and put in prison the thieves and traitors. Systematically, harshly, and severely.

Zelensky can still decide which side of the trench he wants to live on going forward.

Heorhiy Semenets, Argument