MILES PARKS, HOST:
Negotiations to end Russia's war against Ukraine will continue in Florida this weekend as a Ukrainian delegation arrives to negotiate with the Trump administration. Joining us now with the latest is NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Kyiv. Hi, Eleanor.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Miles.
PARKS: So these negotiations won't include a top Ukrainian negotiator who resigned yesterday. Can you tell us about him?
BEARDSLEY: Well, his name is Andriy Yermak, and he is Zelenskyy's chief of staff and right-hand man. They go way back to Zelenskyy's TV days before he was elected president of Ukraine in 2019. Yermak is a film producer and a former business partner of Zelenskyy, and they've also worked closely together and even lived together in the fortified government compound in Kyiv since the full-scale invasion. Yermak is not well-liked by Ukrainians, who say he's amassed too much power and was not the person they voted for. Analysts tell me American and European allies didn't appreciate him either.
Anyway, he got caught up in the corruption scandal that broke in mid-November, involving at least eight people who are now under investigation, several close to Zelenskyy, who are suspected of siphoning off more than $100 million from the state nuclear power agency, and this at a time when Ukrainians are fighting a war and hunkering down under daily power cuts. Investigators searched his house Friday morning, and Friday night, Zelenskyy spoke and said he had accepted Yermak's resignation in his video address to the nation. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: He says, "for our internal strength, there should be no reason to be distracted by anything other than the defense of Ukraine." And he went on to say, "Russia really wants Ukraine to make mistakes, and we will make no mistakes."
PARKS: But negotiations are ongoing to end this war with Russia. How is this scandal going to impact that?
BEARDSLEY: Well, some say it's made Ukraine more vulnerable and weakened Zelenskyy. But today I spoke with 30-year-old Dmytro Kotyatensky. He's a young anticorruption activist, and he says this investigation and Yermak's resignation doesn't show Ukraine is corrupt. Just the opposite - it shows Ukraine can independently investigate and expose corruption, something Russia, he says, could never do. Here he is.
DMYTRO KOTYATENSKY: For me, it's incredible that during a full-scale war, we didn't drift to autocracy, and we are still a democratic country with clear European values.
PARKS: And can you tell us the latest on the amended peace plan that negotiators are working from?
BEARDSLEY: Well, this is the amended plan after Ukraine and the Europeans weighed in on what was a very pro-Russian plan presented last week by White House envoy Steve Witkoff. Zelenskyy has endorsed this one, but while Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested the plan could still be the basis of a settlement, he said Russia would only stop its war if Ukraine leaves territory it's currently occupying, and he was referring to parts of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region that Russia has not been able to take in nearly four years of fighting. Putin said, if Ukraine doesn't leave, Russia will take the land by force anyway.
And Ukrainians don't think Putin will stop, and it's easy to understand why, Miles. The Kremlin continues to attack Ukrainian cities. Just last night, there was a massive combined attack of drones and missiles on Kyiv. It went on for 10 hours. Two people were killed, dozens injured.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: And this morning, we went out to an apartment complex that was hit by drones. There were burned out apartments, smashed cars. But it was a hive of activity. Residents were picking up glass, cutting plywood for blown-out windows. And here's 42-year-old Oxana Honahan, who was furiously sweeping.
OXANA HONAHAN: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: She said, there were booms all night from Shahed drones. I asked her, how are Ukrainians rebounding after all these nightly attacks?
HONAHAN: (Through interpreter) Ukrainians are such people, you know, that, no matter how strong they hit us, we will survive, even, like, to make them angry that we are still living.
BEARDSLEY: Angry that we're still living, she said.
PARKS: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Kyiv, thank you.
BEARDSLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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