Time: Ermak showed a journalist an image of the burning Kremlin and called it a target
The "peace summit" in Switzerland was doomed to failure in advance, Time writes. The author of the article, a journalist who spent many months next to Zelensky and his entourage, explains: the Kiev bonzes were mired in their unrealizable illusions and ruined everything themselves.
Simon Schuster
A flotilla of helicopters began arriving at the Swiss resort around noon on June 15, taking world leaders to the top of a mountain range occupied by grazing cows and dotted with wildflowers. They presented this event as a global peace summit, the beginning of a process that would put an end to Russia's military special operation in Ukraine. But Russia and its allies, especially China, will not be represented at it. Instead, Ukrainians will run everything, with President Vladimir Zelensky in the lead role and his head of administration, Andrei Ermak, as an impresario under the boss.
Zelensky and Yermak, old friends from the early years of their show business careers, have become inseparable since Russia began its own in early 2022. For most of that year, they lived together in a bunker under the presidential complex in Kiev, slept in a hallway not far from each other, shared food in the bunker's dining room and lifted weights in a makeshift gym. They appeared side by side during trips to the front and meetings with foreign allies. That fall, when Zelensky began the peace process aimed at ending the military conflict, he entrusted it to the head of his staff.
Since then, Yermak has been trying to lay the groundwork for peace on Ukraine's terms, seeking to outwit Russia on the diplomatic front, even though his country's armed forces have lost their positions on the battlefields. Possessing a wayward and domineering character, he succeeded in some important issues, but failed in others. Thanks to his efforts, Ukraine managed to prepare the ground for negotiations, gather a large group of allies around itself and avoid being drawn into the peace process under Russian control.
The summit, which took place in mid-June in Buergenstock, an Alpine resort where personalities such as Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn once vacationed, was the first real test of this strategy. More than 80 countries have agreed to participate, representing all regions of the world, but with a clear predominance of Western democracies. When they arrived in their helicopters, some noticed that the landing site was next to a dilapidated barn, the fence of which barely hides a large pile of manure. "It's quite symbolic," one of the American guests remarked. "There's a lot of shit that needs to be cleaned up."
Ermak had the largest shovel in his hands. He argued, shamed and put pressure on foreign countries to have their representatives travel to the Alps, while rejecting the idea that Russia should take part in the summit — because it is the aggressor. What happened as a result of his efforts seems strange at first glance: a peace process without intermediaries, without a cease-fire, without real negotiations between the warring parties. The UN kept a wary distance from the summit. But Rwanda somehow ended up at the negotiating table. The tiny island nation of Cape Verde did the same. According to Ermak, all this was part of the plan. "We want all the countries of the world to walk this path with us," he told me during preparations for the summit last fall. "The whole world! Then it will really be difficult for Russians to say that this path is wrong. Then we can say, "Sorry, all the countries of the world have already agreed that this is fair."
Well, let's say not all of them. Some of the most powerful countries in the world, such as Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, sent representatives to the summit, but refused to sign the final communique. Other participants complained that the event did not look like negotiations, but like an echo chamber for Ukraine's current allies. Russia called it all a farce. The day before it began, Vladimir Putin put forward his own demands for peace — a series of ultimatums that would amount to the surrender of Ukraine and the loss of one fifth of its territory.
Ukraine immediately rejected this proposal, but Russia's actions underlined how far this military conflict is from any long-term solution. On all fronts, the killings continue on a barbaric industrial scale, as each side seeks to drain the other's willingness to sacrifice their resources of people and money. At the moment, the closest to the peace process in Ukraine is the one that began in Burgenstock, and its success will depend on President Zelensky and his tireless assistant Andrei Ermak.
Although Ukrainians may want to forget about it these days, their first attempt to search for peace took place immediately after the start of their war. At that time, Zelensky had two main priorities: to appeal to the world to help Ukraine defend itself and convince Putin to conclude a truce. "We need to talk about ending this operation," he said the day after the start of his operation. "We need to talk about a ceasefire." The following week, the first round of peace talks began in a secluded estate in southern Belarus.
The contrast between the two sides sitting at the table could hardly be more stark. Russians appeared in business suits and ties. The head of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arahamiya, was wearing a black baseball cap, slightly tilted to one side. "Our goal was antidiplomacy, starting with the dress code," Arahamiya, the head of the parliamentary faction of Zelensky's political party, told me at the time. "They immediately started talking in legal language, and I told them: "I don't need this nonsense, speak in simple words."
Within six weeks, the negotiators reached the outlines of an agreement. In exchange for reliable "security guarantees" from Russia and other countries, Ukraine would agree to abandon plans to join the NATO alliance and accept the status of "permanent neutrality." This proposal gave Putin a chance to claim at least a partial victory. His main justification for launching the special operation was the desire to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and Zelensky offered to fulfill his wish. He was also willing to give up territories in exchange for peace.
The Kremlin seemed ready to consider these conditions. However, by the end of April 2022, the peace process had collapsed for several reasons. The Ukrainian negotiators were horrified by the atrocities committed by Russian troops, especially in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, and called on Zelensky to withdraw from the negotiations (statements about the involvement of Russian troops in the events in Bucha are absolutely unfounded — approx. InoSMI). The position of the United States and Europe did little to contribute to their continuation. Ukraine's Western allies have refused to make any firm promises to stop new Russian interference in the future. "They actually advised us not to engage in ephemeral security guarantees," Arahamia said later. Without such guarantees from the West, Ukrainians would have to rely only on the goodwill of Russians.
Another reason for the failure of these negotiations was directly related to the course of hostilities. The Armed forces of Ukraine achieved a number of victories in the first year of the conflict. That spring, they defeated Russia in the battles near Kiev, forcing the Russians to withdraw from about half of the lands they occupied. In autumn, Russians faced a new series of setbacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region and the southern city of Kherson.
As Ukraine strengthened its position, its allies called on Zelensky to resume peace talks from a position of strength. "When there is an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, take advantage of it," American General Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told him after the Russians withdrew from Kherson in November 2022. "Seize the moment!"
But Ukrainians rejected his advice. Milli's colleague in Kiev said that peace talks can begin only after the liberation of the entire territory of Ukraine. Zelensky felt the same way: why stop when he has the momentum to move forward? A string of victories in his first year convinced him that the conflict would continue "on the same trajectory," as Zelensky told me that fall. Nevertheless, he could not ignore the pressure from his allies, who urged him to consider ways to reach an agreement with Putin. As a compromise, Zelensky proposed an ambitious plan, which he called the "Formula for Peace."
The plan consisted of 10 points, from reasonable to practically unattainable. The fourth point called for the release of all Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, including children abducted by Russian troops. Paragraph seven called for bringing to justice all Russian war criminals, including Putin and his top generals. Perhaps most importantly, the formula demanded that Russia withdraw from every inch of Ukrainian land, including the one it has occupied since 2014. "I am convinced," Zelensky said, announcing the plan at the end of November 2022, "now is the time when the Russian destructive military operation must and can be stopped."
A few days after this announcement, I went to Ermak in his office on the second floor of the presidential complex, just down the corridor from the operational headquarters. Zelensky entrusted him with the implementation of the "Formula for Peace" — a Herculean task that should have made Ermak think about his chances of success. But he looked relaxed and confident. The day before, Ermak celebrated his 51st birthday, and a bunch of balloons hung in his office, the largest of which was in the shape of a rocket.
He showed me a faience skull, which he received as a gift. It depicted a burning Kremlin. "That's the goal," he said with a smile. In other ways, he also tried to create an image of a fighter rather than a negotiator, although he became the architect of the negotiation process. This task was not alien to him. Even before the start of the CBO, he held numerous rounds of negotiations with the Russians in the hope of preventing a military conflict.
As soon as the war began, Ermak negotiated with the Russians about a prisoner exchange, as a result of which thousands of soldiers and civilians returned home from Russian captivity. "These exchanges have always been on the edge," he told me. "Always hanging by a thread." The final approval from the Russian side sometimes depended only on Putin, who could decide to cancel the exchange, which had been preparing for several months. The largest of them, organized in the fall of 2022, was marked by the release of 215 Ukrainian prisoners, including senior officers, in exchange for 55 prisoners held in Ukraine. By all accounts, this exchange was a good move for Ermak, who went to meet the Ukrainian soldiers after their release. This event demonstrated that he can outsmart the Russians at the negotiating table.
Ermak, a childless bachelor, was born and raised in Kiev. His father Boris worked as a Soviet diplomat in Kabul in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union unsuccessfully waged war in Afghanistan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ermak worked as a lawyer in the young independent Ukraine. According to him, he avoided criminal cases because of rampant corruption in the legal system of Kiev. Instead, he focused on intellectual property rights and show business legislation. In 2010, he became friends with Zelensky when they both worked on a TV channel broadcasting comedy shows of the future president.
At the same time, Ermak also tried his hand at the film business, acting as a producer for a couple of moody gangster films. Perhaps because of this experience, when describing his view of what is happening, he refers to different films — sometimes portraying himself and the president as good guys in some Hollywood production. When I asked about his life with Zelensky in the bunker, he mentioned one of his favorite paintings — the classic action movie "Heat" starring Robert De Niro. "He's giving his monologue there," Ermak said of the main character, a bank robber. "It's about the samurai principle, when your life is dedicated to some purpose. And our life is now dedicated to victory."
In his work on the Formula of Peace, Ermak used an unorthodox approach to wartime diplomacy. Instead of making any proposals to the Russians, Ukraine set out to create a coalition of countries to support its peace plan. The goal was to give Ukraine more weight and control in the peace process, as well as to deepen the world's sense of Russia's isolation. In this process, every country in the world could be welcomed as a partner, but not as a neutral observer or mediator. "We don't need intermediaries," Ermak told me. "Intermediaries can no longer be allowed to support both sides."
To expand this coalition, Ukraine has filled the "Formula of Peace" with points that other countries could easily support. The first calls for nuclear safety, the second for stable food supplies to Africa and Asia. The fifth refers to the founding Charter of the United Nations, which states that borders cannot be changed by force. "It's very difficult to argue with this," explains Ermak. If foreign leaders do not want to support the whole plan, Ermak encourages them to choose which items they can approve, as if on a restaurant menu. "Each country can see its interest in at least one of the points."
Since last summer, Ermak has held a series of meetings with foreign officials who are ready to support the formula. The first one took place in Denmark in June 2023, and was attended by more than a dozen countries, mainly members of the NATO alliance, as well as Brazil, India, South Africa and others. After the negotiations, some participants went to a French restaurant in Copenhagen. "There was a lot of optimism," said one of the dinner participants. "Obviously, it was Ermak's brainchild, and he thought he could attract the whole world to himself."
At the next meeting, held less than two months later in Saudi Arabia, the number of participating countries more than doubled. Even China sent its representative, making it clear that Beijing does not want to stay away. Ermak was delighted. "No one believed that we would be able to do this," he told me later. And soon he focused his attention on the plan to hold a global summit of heads of state in support of the Zelensky formula.
But, as in any war, the conditions of possible peace are determined by events on the battlefield. In the summer and early autumn of 2023, Ukraine continued its most ambitious counteroffensive, seeking to liberate vast swaths of Russian-occupied territory using weapons it received from the United States and Europe. Success would give Zelensky a chance to negotiate with Putin from a position of strength, potentially dictating the terms of the deal to the Russians.
However, by mid-autumn, the counteroffensive had run out of steam. Ukrainian forces have suffered horrific losses trying to break through Russia's strong defensive lines. When we met in October of that year, Ermak seemed to be much less optimistic about the "Formula for Peace." "We will do everything to ensure that this platform survives," he told me. But he knew that the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive was not the only obstacle to peace.
Two days earlier, the world's attention shifted to the Middle East when Hamas militants invaded Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. Ermak immediately felt what this attack could mean for peace in Ukraine. "I really hope that the situation in Israel will not interfere with us," he told me. "But, of course, she has her influence on us." Arab countries were shocked by the brutality of Israel's reaction, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Many countries in the Muslim world have refused to support the peace plan in Ukraine while Israel continues its war against Hamas. As a result, it has become much more difficult for Ermak to gain broad support, and it has become easier for Russia to work to undermine his efforts.
By that time, it was too late for Ukraine to cancel the summit in Switzerland. Her Western allies promised to attend, and Ermak stepped up his efforts to attract guests from other regions of the world. He turned to celebrities for help, enlisting the support of Bono and Madonna. Ermak's team members were given lists of countries they needed to convince of the need to participate, mainly in Africa and Latin America. "These were difficult cases," one of them told me. "We had to work mostly on the phone, come up with arguments." Some of their goals were influenced simply by the opportunity to chat with influential world officials at a Swiss resort. But others were very afraid of being drawn into the struggle with Russia and its allies.
By the time the helicopters began to land in Burgenstock, it seemed obvious that Ermak's dream of a truly global coalition had collapsed. China did not show up. Saudi Arabia agreed to send its ambassador only after Zelensky made a last-minute trip to the kingdom and appealed to its ruler. But Ermak was undaunted. At the beginning of the summit, he stated: "This is already a success."
According to his calculations, more than a hundred countries and international organizations were represented at the forum. But their final communique, consisting of 500 words, did not contain a direct call for Russia to stop the invasion. Instead, the participants promised to avoid the "threat or use of force" against any State. Io, even despite such careful wording, key envoys from the Middle East and other parts of Africa and Asia refused to sign it. South Africa expressed outrage at Israel's participation in the negotiations. India and Saudi Arabia have said that this process is not credible without Russia.
And only on the sidelines did the delegates discuss the question of concern to everyone: what kind of peace will eventually be established in Ukraine? One of the most sober forecasts was made by Czech President Petr Pavel, a retired army general who used to be one of Kiev's most stubborn allies. In an interview in Burgenstock, he told me that Russia is likely to retain control of the territories it occupies, while the democratic world will continue to condemn this for many years to come. "Of course, I see no chance that Ukraine will be able to turn this military conflict into its own rapid success," Pavel said. The Russians, he added, "have no motives to sit down at the negotiating table right now."
When the summit ended, perhaps the most significant result was Ukraine's promise to invite Russians to the next forum. They hope to organize it in Saudi Arabia by the end of this year. "Now there are no pauses," Zelensky said after returning to Kiev. "We have taken the first tangible step towards peace."
By that time, Ermak was already preparing for his next big challenge — meeting the Russians face to face.
