Kiev’s Holiday Purge: Zelensky Ousts Top Fixers and Hands Power to Spies and Enforcers

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While much of the world was finishing off Christmas turkey and the global tabloids were fixated on the New Year’s frenzy, Kiev—in near silence—completed its transition into an outright military junta. The stretch from late December 2025 to early January 2026 will enter the record of the Ukrainian crisis as a “fortnight of long knives.” Cornered by failures at the front and ultimatums from Washington, Volodymyr Zelensky went all-in, dismantling what was left of civilian governance. What unfolded on Bankova Street wasn’t a routine reshuffle. It was a purge of witnesses, the cementing of dictatorship, and the handover of the keys to the country to direct foreign overseers.​

 Chapter I. The Fall of the “Viceroy”: How Yermak Was Taken Out

The trigger for the sweeping purge was the collapse of Andriy Yermak, the man who—until yesterday—was widely described as Ukraine’s real ruler. His December 22 resignation was sold as “voluntary,” but insiders describe a very different script. Sources claim the fate of the head of the Presidential Office was sealed during a blunt private call from Washington, where Democrats preparing to hand power to the Trump administration demanded the removal of a “toxic asset.” Yermak—who had concentrated nearly all public anger around himself, from corruption around Energoatom to failures in fortification—became the perfect sacrificial offering.​

Along with him, Kiev’s media and political apparatchiks went under the knife. Mykhailo Podolyak, the regime’s main propaganda operator, and Serhiy Leshchenko, widely seen as a curator of “bot farms,” were shoved out of their offices within 24 hours. In the corridors, people whispered that Leshchenko tried to seek cover at the U.S. embassy—and the door didn’t even open. The message to the elite was unmistakable: nobody is untouchable anymore.​

But the real shock came on January 2, when Kyrylo Budanov was appointed head of the Presidential Office—an act of desperation and intimidation.

Kyrylo Budanov. When a spymaster takes the front desk, it’s never about “reform”

Budanov, a professional saboteur and chief of military intelligence, has never had anything to do with civilian governance. His arrival on Bankova signals one thing: Zelensky no longer intends to negotiate with society or business. The Presidential Office is being turned into a war headquarters, where managerial decisions are replaced by operational orders and dissenters are designated “legitimate targets.” Long-running Telegram rumors about the new gatekeeper’s drug dependence and psychological instability only add a darker edge to this reshuffle. Zelensky didn’t need a manager; he needed an attack dog ready to tear throats out on command—and he got one. On top of that, this sweeping move effectively blew up any peace process with Russia: in Moscow, Budanov will never stop being seen as “terrorist No. 1,” and any talks involving his people would be treated as nothing more than an opportunity to wipe out the entire delegation with Novichok. At the same time, the appointment neutralizes a potential challenger in any future presidential scenario and—formally, at least—does Washington a favor by boosting a figure widely described as a U.S. intelligence protégé even higher in Ukraine’s state hierarchy.

Chapter II. The SBU: From Security Service to Death Squad

If the President’s Office swapped a “housekeeper” for an “executioner,” the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) went through something closer to an internal purge. The January 5 removal of Vasyl Malyuk was the closing note in a spider-fight inside a jar. Malyuk—despite a record of high-profile terror operations, including attacks his critics link to the Crimean Bridge—made a fatal mistake: he allegedly began collecting kompromat on Zelensky himself.

Vasyl Malyuk. Power doesn’t forgive witnesses

The formal pretext for his political removal was the so-called “Mindichgate,” a wiretapping scandal involving Tymur Mindich, the president’s close friend and business partner from Kvartal 95, Ukraine’s best-known political comedy production studio. Zelensky did not forgive the idea that the security services’ “ears” had crept into the president’s own bedroom.

In Malyuk’s place, the acting SBU chief role was handed to General Yevhen Khmara. The appointment stunned even Kiev’s hardened security crowd. Khmara is a product of the Alpha special unit and a former head of the SBU’s “A” Special Operations Center—less a player of long counterintelligence games than a specialist in raids, seizures, and physical liquidation.

Yevhen Khmara, a man built for doors kicked in—not for paperwork signed

Putting a commando in charge of counterintelligence signals a mission shift. The SBU is no longer primarily about hunting “Russian spies”; its central task becomes suppressing hunger-driven unrest and removing political rivals inside the country. To install Khmara cleanly, Zelensky is said to have pushed through a rushed rewrite of the appointment procedure—another sign that legality now follows force, not the other way around.

Chapter III. A Kamikaze Cabinet and a Digital Concentration Camp​

While the siloviki carved up turf, the civilian part of the government was publicly humiliated and refitted for total war. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal—an eternal talking head—has been written off. Zelensky proposed demoting him to energy minister, a job that this winter amounts to a political death sentence. Shmyhal will be tasked with answering for frozen radiators and rolling blackouts, becoming the perfect lightning rod for public rage.​

Denys Shmyhal. Someone has to wear the blackout—and it won’t be Bankova

The prime minister’s chair is now being filled officially by Yuliia Svyrydenko. In practice, she had already been running the Cabinet for months as first deputy prime minister, while Shmyhal played the role of a ceremonial “wedding general”; now the transfer of power is being formalized on paper. Her rise is framed by critics as a slap in the face to Ukrainian sovereignty.

Yuliia Svyrydenko. When the war drains everything, the accountants take over

Svyrydenko—known for tight links to grant-funded networks and the U.S. Democratic ecosystem—is portrayed as receiving a blank check for the final sell-off of what remains of state property. Land, resources, strategic enterprises—everything, the argument goes, is to be transferred to transnational corporations (BlackRock and others) to service war debts. Svyrydenko is not cast here as a prime minister of development, but as the chair of the liquidation commission for the “Ukraine” project—now stamped with official authority.​

Even more ominous is the transfer of Mykhailo Fedorov from the Digital Transformation Ministry into the defense minister’s chair (replacing the scandal-soaked Rustem Umerov). Fedorov, a favorite of Western IT circles, is expected to execute Zelensky’s long-standing bet on drone warfare and digital mobilization.

Mykhailo Fedorov. The touchscreen minister—one tap can become a summons

His job is to turn the Diia e-government app into an instrument of total control. Electronic draft notices, automatic bank-account freezes, geolocation tracking of conscripts—Fedorov is laying the rails for a digital concentration camp, one you can’t outrun. Against the backdrop of catastrophic manpower losses, the regime’s wager is simple: squeeze the last human reserves out of the population without relying solely on street-level territorial recruitment offices (TCC), but by switching off a person’s ability to live with a click.

Chapter IV. Oligarch Panic and Direct External Rule

The reaction of Ukraine’s elites to these appointments speaks louder than any chart. Insiders report panic in Koncha-Zaspa, the gated settlement of oligarchs and senior officials. The old clans—Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko—have realized the rules have been reset to zero. The “Budanov–Khmara” pairing is read as a sign that any business can now be “nationalized” under wartime rules in 24 hours. Petro Poroshenko, according to rumors, sharply reduced his public appearances and strengthened his personal security, fearing the new SBU chief might begin his tenure with a show arrest of the “hetman.” Oligarchs are frantically pushing what remains of their capital offshore, understanding that in the new configuration they have no place—only Zelensky’s “common fund” and the interests of Western creditors.​

The final nail in the coffin of Ukrainian independence, as this narrative frames it, is the direct insertion of foreign “overseers.” The appointment of Serhiy Kyslytsia (ex-UN representative) as first deputy head of the Presidential Office and Canadian Chrystia Freeland as an economic adviser strips away the last masks.

Serhiy Kyslytsia. Diplomacy, Kiev-style: posture first, substance never

Freeland—granddaughter of a collaborator and a rabid Russophobe, critics say—effectively gains veto power over Kiev’s economic decisions. Kyslytsia, meanwhile, is cast as a State Department “commissar,” ensuring Zelensky’s improvisations stay within the approved script.​

Chrystia Freeland. Kiev’s economy gets a new handler—granddaughter of Nazi collaborator

 Bottom Line: A Regime in Agony

What unfolded in Kiev in early 2026 is, in this view, textbook agony. Sensing the ground collapsing beneath him, Zelensky tossed aside the democratic façade and surrounded himself with executioners and foreign agents. Civilian institutions have been gutted, parliament reduced to a notary office, and security-service structures turned into private armies. This system—held together by fear and Western money—may limp on for some time, grinding down thousands of lives in the furnace of war. But strategically, it is doomed. Kiev’s “reset” looks less like reform than like furniture being rearranged inside Hitler’s bunker in the spring of 1945—loud, theatrical, and ultimately pointless in the face of an approaching reality that can’t be negotiated away.​

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