US engages in vital Ukraine peace negotiations with Zelensky’s ally, despised by Trump due to connection with Hunter Biden, in Saudi Arabia following major drone strike on Moscow

US diplomats are currently engaging in important peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia. The delegation is being led by Andriy Yermak, a significant figure in Kyiv and a close confidant of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

However, concerns have arisen regarding Yermak’s participation in the negotiations taking place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are worries that his presence could escalate tensions during this crucial period and potentially hinder Kyiv’s efforts to secure a beneficial peace agreement.

That is because Donald Trump, who clearly harbours a notable distaste for Zelensky, is believed to foster similar feelings for his top aide. 

Yermak, aged 53, was prominently involved in the Hunter Biden scandal, where Trump was accused of coercing Zelensky to uncover damaging information on Joe Biden’s family in return for military assistance. These allegations ultimately led to the impeachment of the US president.

Ukrainian officials this week admitted they still think Trump bears ill will toward Yermak, though they hope US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s presence will help to calm any tensions between the two delegations. 

The potentially pivotal talks in Jeddah today come hours after Ukraine’s armed forces battered targets across Western Russia in one of the largest drone assaults of the war, while Russia announced it had retaken some 100 square kilometres of territory in its Kursk region from Kyiv’s troops. 

Yermak told reporters this morning ahead of his meeting with Rubio that Ukraine was ready to negotiate to end the war.

‘We are ready to do everything to achieve peace,’ Yermak said, before later taking to social media to declare that discussions with the US delegation had begun positively.

‘The meeting with the US team started very constructively, we continue our work.’

A former film producer and lawyer who first met Zelensky during his years as a comedian, Yermak has become the Ukrainian president’s right-hand man and now holds the power to negotiate directly with Washington in pursuit of a peace deal. 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Yermak has played a key role in Ukraine’s foreign policy operations, securing the release of Ukrainian prisoners, brokering arms shipments and working with the West to structure sanctions packages against Moscow.

Meanwhile, his close personal relationship with Zelensky has earned him the moniker of ‘St. Andriy, the First Apostle’ in Ukrainian media – but it is this proximity that some fear could prove a liability in discussions with the Trump administration. 

Yermak had no political or diplomatic experience before he was granted an administrative role in Zelensky’s government in 2019. 

His first significant brush with US politics came in July of that year, just three months after the Ukrainian president’s landslide election victory.

Yermak received a call from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, urging him to open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company under scrutiny for corruption.

At the time, Hunter Biden, son of then-US Vice President Joe Biden, was receiving $50,000 per month to sit on Burisma’s board, despite having no experience in the energy sector. 

Giuliani and Trump were convinced that exposing wrongdoing at Burisma would damage Joe Biden’s political standing ahead of the 2020 election.

According to a Ukrainian official who spoke to the Telegraph, Yermak was ‘anxious not to be dragged into US domestic politics’ and advised Zelensky to hold off. 

But his refusal to cooperate infuriated Giuliani and Trump.

Around the same time, the Trump administration chose to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid that was earmarked for supporting Zelensky’s forces in their fight against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.

The suspicious timing triggered allegations that Trump was trying to leverage Zelensky into a quid pro quo – continued military aid in exchange for a commitment to investigate alleged corruption by the Biden family. 

The Ukrainian President never carried out Trump’s request, and allegations that Trump had tried to force Kyiv into investigating the Biden family led to his impeachment. 

Although he was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, the episode reportedly deepened the US president’s animosity toward Zelensky, and by extension, Yermak.

‘Trump hates Ukraine,’ Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born US businessman who was once a fixer in Ukraine for Trump’s lawyer Giuliani, told Politico last year. 

‘He and people around him believe that Ukraine was the cause of all Trump’s problems.’

But a Ukrainian government adviser told the Telegraph this week: ‘The anger isn’t just towards Zelensky – it is to Yermak, too.’

Given the concerns that Trump continues to look down on Yermak as well as Zelensky, the decision to send him to Saudi Arabia to lead critical ceasefire talks has raised eyebrows.

But Yermak has long operated at the centre of Ukraine’s foreign policy machinery and Zelensky clearly believes his right-hand man is the best-equipped person to broker a peace deal that would prevent Kyiv from making catastrophic concessions to Moscow.

Yermak has been at Zelensky’s side since the very beginning of his presidency, having been granted a modest role as a personal assistant to the presidential office in 2019. 

That role, seen as a fairly low-level administrative job, came with no official portfolio. 

But Yermak saw the lack of a definitive job description as an opportunity and reportedly began consolidating outsized power by effectively becoming Zelensky’s constant shadow.

‘He was always the closest one physically,’ a former official told Ukrainskaya Pravda.

‘Even when there was a meeting, Yermak would edge his way onto the armrest of Zelensky’s chair just to stay close.’

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Yermak’s work to solidify his place by the president’s side quickly bore fruit.

As Zelensky pivoted into the role of a wartime leader, Yermak expertly leveraged the personal and professional trust placed in him by the president.

He has successfully orchestrated diplomatic outreach, secured international aid and has worked closely with European leaders and senior officials in the Biden administration to structure economic sanctions against Russia.

Now more than three years into full-scale war, his power and influence as a central figure in Kyiv’s foreign policy architecture is almost absolute.

‘The whole diplomatic track is an area where Yermak would be physically impossible to replace even if Zelensky wanted to,’ a former high-ranking official told Ukrainskaya Pravda.

In the talks today, Ukraine is expected to propose a ceasefire with Russia covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes, as well as the release of prisoners, according to two senior Ukrainian officials. 

The officials also said Kyiv is now ready to sign Trump’s coveted minerals deal – though it is not clear whether any security guarantees have been added.

‘We do have a proposal for a ceasefire in the sky and ceasefire at sea,’ a Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

‘These are the ceasefire options that are easy to install and to monitor, and it’s possible to start with them.’

US Secretary of State Rubio, who was joined in Jeddah by Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz, signalled that the Trump administration would likely be pleased by such a proposal.

‘I’m not saying that alone is enough, but it’s the kind of concession you would need to see in order to end the conflict,’ he told reporters.

‘You’re not going to get a ceasefire and an end to this war unless both sides make concessions.

‘The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine and obviously it will be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to force the Russians all the way back to where they were back in 2014,’ Rubio added, referring to when Russia seized the Crimea peninsula and backed a separatist offensive in eastern Ukraine.

On his plane to Jeddah, Rubio said the US delegation would not be proposing any specific measures to secure an end to the three-year conflict but rather wanted to hear from Ukraine about what they would be willing to consider.

‘I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do,’ Rubio told reporters accompanying him. 

‘I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.’