Yermak's exit: what did 28 November 2025 change?
A retrospective on the day the head of the Office of the President resigned after a anti-corruption raid on his apartment, amid an IMF deal and a Bosporus tanker incident.
What did Ukraine's government look like on 28 November 2025, the day the head of the Office of the President, Andriy Yermak, resigned? The resignation came after agents from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office raided his apartment. Ukrainian-language reports at the time linked the search to his alleged involvement in the scandal around Energoatom.
The investigation behind the raid
The raid fell under Operation Midas, an investigation by NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. It concerns large-scale bribery in Ukraine's energy sector during the war with Russia. As later described, the investigation was launched in 2024 and was still ongoing as of November 2025. Its data collection lasted 15 months, with more than 70 searches, 4 million US dollars seized and about 1,000 hours of audio recordings of suspects' conversations.
The search at Yermak's home therefore belonged to a case that had been built over a long period by the country's anti-corruption institutions. His resignation, announced the same day, removed the head of the president's office from his post.
A tense week for public finances
Two days earlier, on 26 November 2025, the International Monetary Fund had announced a staff-level agreement with Ukraine on a proposed Extended Fund Facility worth more than US$8 billion. The programme outlined fiscal and monetary policies meant to support macroeconomic stability, debt sustainability and external financing while the war with Russia continued.
The two developments fell within days of each other: a financing agreement for the state and a corruption investigation reaching the president's closest administrative circle. No report from the day tied the two together, and they are best read as separate events that shared a news cycle.
Other events of the same days
The war continued to generate headlines beyond Kyiv. On 27 November 2025, a Russian court sentenced eight people to life imprisonment for terrorism over the truck bomb attack on the Crimean Bridge in October 2022, which killed five people. As later described, the explosion on 8 October 2022 collapsed two road spans into the water and damaged the adjoining railway bridge.
On 28 November 2025 itself, two tankers sanctioned as part of the alleged Russian shadow fleet were hit by explosions while transiting the Bosporus. At least one caught fire. Turkey said search and rescue operations were under way to evacuate crew members.
Why the date matters
For a publication focused on government and reform, 28 November 2025 stands out for the resignation. A senior official left office after a search carried out by independent anti-corruption bodies, in an investigation that was still running. How the case developed afterwards is a matter for later reporting; on that date, what was established was the raid, the resignation and the energy-sector investigation behind them.
