The news out of Kyiv last week carried an unsettling clarity. On November 29, Andriy Yermak—President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s formidable chief of staff and chief negotiator—stepped down after anti-corruption investigators searched properties linked to him as part of a widening probe into alleged kickbacks at the state nuclear conglomerate Energoatom. What might seem like another tremor in Ukraine’s political landscape is, in fact, a far more consequential moment. This is not mere political theater; it is a critical engagement in the second, often overlooked, war for Ukraine’s survival.
For nearly four years, global attention has been riveted by the kinetic war: the drone duels over the Black Sea, the punishing artillery exchanges in the Donbas, and the steady flow of Western matériel that sustains Ukraine’s frontline defenses. But while territory can be liberated by force, Ukraine’s political future hinges on something more fragile—the credibility of its institutions. Without that, military victories risk becoming strategically hollow.
The timing of this raid and resignation is instructive. It occurs precisely when Kyiv is under maximum diplomatic strain, attempting to counter the perceived pro-Russian bias in the ceasefire framework pushed by the Trump administration through US intermediaries in Geneva. The emerging contours of the Trump team’s ceasefire proposal, which privilege territorial freezes over accountability mechanisms for Russia, have reinforced the impression in Kyiv that Washington is drifting toward a settlement architecture more palatable to Moscow than to Ukraine’s elected leadership.
With European allies showing signs of financial fatigue—exemplified by Belgium’s recent objection to using frozen Russian assets for aid—the relationship between Western support and Ukrainian trustworthiness has never been starker. Aid, whether financial or material, is transactional. Its currency is the confidence that the recipient state is not merely an impoverished supplicant but a developing, rule-bound partner.
Historically, states born out of the collapse of empires or emerging from prolonged conflict often succumb to a specific form of institutional decay. This rot is not simple bribery; it is the establishment of parallel, extractive systems of governance where official titles serve primarily as conduits for private enrichment. The $100 million energy sector scandal currently under investigation—involving kickbacks at the state-owned nuclear giant, Energoatom, and allegedly reaching deep into the president’s inner circle—is a perfect articulation of this systemic danger. Such grand corruption is not just inefficient; it is a strategic liability. It weakens the moral authority of the state, poisons domestic political cohesion, and confirms the worst suspicions of skeptical foreign partners.
What is truly remarkable about the Yermak episode is not the alleged corruption itself, which is depressingly common in the post-Soviet space, but the institutional response. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, established under immense international pressure, demonstrated their independence by targeting the single most powerful unelected official in the government. They did this not during a period of peaceful democratic consolidation, but in the midst of the most destructive European war since 1945. This action is a powerful, self-administered inoculation against the political disease that has doomed so many promising democratic transitions.
This institutional assertiveness aligns precisely with the demands laid out in the European Commission’s 2025 enlargement report, which made plain that judicial reform, prosecutorial independence, and operational freedom for anti-corruption bodies are not aspirational benchmarks. They are prerequisites for accession. Compliance is not a bureaucratic checkbox—it is Ukraine’s political passport to the West.
The Commission noted areas of progress but also stressed the urgent need to accelerate structural changes. Specifically, it demanded the swift removal of legislative loopholes that allow for the politicization of the prosecutor service during martial law. For Kyiv, compliance with these demands is equivalent to securing a strategic mountain pass. Successfully implementing these reforms is not merely a bureaucratic exercise; it is the act of integrating Ukraine into the Western legal and economic ecosystem, cementing its victory over the Kremlin’s stated goal of drawing the country back into its orbit of managed autocracy. The European mandate transforms anti-corruption work from a domestic political concern into a strategic military asset.
President Zelenskyy’s decision to accept Yermak’s resignation and announce a “reset” of the presidential office signals an understanding of the profound stakes involved. Allowing the investigation to proceed against a close personal confidant, even one who has not yet been charged, is an act of substantial political courage. The alternative—to impede the investigation and defend the powerful aide—would have provided ammunition to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine and handed a genuine legislative crisis to Zelenskyy’s own party, threatening his parliamentary stability. Choosing institutional legitimacy over political convenience is the hallmark of leadership operating under the constraints of liberal democracy, especially when facing external aggression.
The future of Ukraine will be determined on two fronts. The first is brutal and visible, fought across ruined cities and snowbound trenches. The second is quieter but no less decisive, unfolding in courtrooms, parliamentary committees, and the meticulous work of pruning corrupt patronage networks. Victory in the former guarantees survival; victory in the latter determines the character of the state that survives.
The Yermak resignation is not a sign of weakness. It is evidence of a country attempting something astonishing: institutional self-renewal in the middle of a war that was designed to annihilate its sovereignty. The next six months will reveal whether this is a singular act of accountability or the opening phase of a systemic overhaul. If Zelenskyy matches institutional reform with legislative insulation for anti-corruption bodies, Ukraine’s integration into the European legal order will become irreversible. If Kyiv sees this moment not as damage control but as a turning point, then Ukraine may finally be on the cusp of winning both wars—the one for territory and the one for the very meaning of statehood.