Exclusive: Zelensky’s ex-chief of staff Yermak ran 'troubling' back-channel with Trump's Susie Wiles

U.S. President Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had a "troubling" back-channel with Andriy Yermak, the controversial former head of the President’s Office, the Kyiv Independent can exclusively reveal.

The back-channel began after Trump's inauguration in January 2025, when President Volodymyr Zelensky tasked Yermak with establishing contacts with high-level American officials.

Yermak and Wiles spoke frequently in the following months, two Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent, until Yermak resigned in the wake of Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau raiding his home in November 2025.  

The "troubling" back-channel was more harmful than helpful, the Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent, something also confirmed by an American government official.

According to one senior Ukrainian official, Yermak frequently misunderstood Wiles and the American way of communicating. Wiles would sometimes agree to do something or help arrange a meeting simply out of politeness, the official explained.

Yermak, however, interpreted such responses as concrete commitments and successes, and would often report them to Zelensky as personal achievements.

“Susie would tell him ‘I will see what I can do,’ when asked about something, and Yermak would then go talk to the president, presenting this as his win,” the senior Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent.

These misunderstandings created "several problems" that hampered Ukraine's relationship with the Trump administration, they said.

A source close to the Trump administration told the Kyiv Independent the infamous blowup in the Oval Office was largely a result of Yermak misreading the mood in the Trump White House.

Yermak did not understand the extent to which he was disliked by the Americans, they said, claiming that former U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg had attempted to persuade Zelensky to avoid the ill-fated meeting in the Oval Office, but his advice was dismissed by the overbearing Yermak.

The source close to the U.S. administration claimed that as corruption allegations began to swirl around him, in mid-to-late 2025 Yermak deliberately undermined Kellogg, one of the most pro-Ukrainian members of the administration, in order to forge a closer relationship with his replacement, Steve Witkoff.

"At one point he just stopped responding to Kellogg even though he was still in his official position. He purposefully cut his knees out from under him to cozy up to Witkoff," the source said.

"He genuinely seemed to believe he was so charismatic and persuasive that he could persuade anyone," they said. "But he wasn't."

Wiles resigned last week as Trump's chief of staff following the Republican Party drubbing in the midterm elections, which saw the GOP lose control of both chambers of Congress.

Yermak had previously maintained extensive contact with the Biden administration's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, according to the source close to the Trump administration.

"Yermak perceived it as a friendship," they said, whilst Sullivan did not.

The source claimed that Sullivan even warned a key member of the incoming Trump administration about Zelensky's powerful number two.

The other senior Ukrainian official said that similarly to his relationship with Sullivan, Yermak and Wiles were “not friends,” and that the back-channel was “more troubling than it actually was meaningful.”

Yermak was equally disliked by his European interlocutors. "We have to deal with him, he's Zelensky's man," a senior European official told the Kyiv Independent, in November 2025. "We don't have a choice."

Andriy Yermak was approached for comment by the Kyiv Independent but did not respond by the time of publication.