KYIV, Nov 29 (AFP/Reuters): A team of Ukrainian negotiators was on Saturday headed to the United States for talks on Washington's plan to end the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
"Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and head of the Ukrainian delegation Rustem Umerov, together with the team, is already on the way to the United States," Zelensky said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, more than 600,000 people in the Kyiv region of Ukraine were without power on Saturday morning after an overnight Russian attack.
Ukraine's energy ministry said more than 500,000 of these were in the capital itself, with the rest in the surrounding region. It attributed the power losses to missile and drone strikes on energy infrastructure in the city and several other regions.
Around 36 missiles and nearly 600 drones were launched on targets across Ukraine overnight, officials said, killing three and injuring dozens of others.
Russia has intensified attacks on Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure as the embattled nation heads into winter, despite US-led efforts to secure a peace deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky removed his powerful chief of staff and top negotiator on Friday, after detectives raided Andriy Yermak's house as part of a sweeping corruption probe.
Yermak's removal deals a serious blow to Zelensky, who faces a mounting Russian offensive in the east as Washington peddles a plan to end the war that Kyiv fears will hand big concessions to Moscow.
Russian drones targeted the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of Saturday, killing one person, wounding several and causing damage to buildings, authorities in Kyiv said.
Yermak, 54, was supposed to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine at crunch peace talks in the United States this weekend, but that plan is now out the window, a senior official briefed on the matter told AFP.
Instead, the talks will be led by Ukrainian security council secretary Rustem Umerov, according to two senior Ukrainian officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Just last week, Zelensky had named Yermak as Ukraine's top negotiator in a vote of confidence despite growing pressure from opposition figures to remove the divisive chief of staff.
Then on Friday, Zelensky announced in a video address: "The Office of the President of Ukraine will be reorganised. The head of the office, Andriy Yermak, has submitted his resignation."
Minutes later, Zelensky signed a decree "to dismiss" Yermak.
On Friday morning, investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Agency (NABU) said it and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office had raided Yermak's apartment as part of an investigation.
They did not say what it was about, and Yermak said he was cooperating fully. Yermak has been accused of involvement in a $100-million kickback scheme in the strategic energy sector, uncovered by investigators earlier this month.
The case triggered widespread public anger at a time when Russia is hammering Ukraine's power grid, causing blackouts and threatening winter heating outages.
In the face of the scandal, Zelensky sought to rally the population on Friday. "If we lose our unity, we risk losing everything: ourselves, Ukraine, our future," he said in the address.
He said he would hold consultations on Saturday over a replacement for Yermak.
Ukrainian negotiators are expected to visit the United States this weekend for talks on Washington's peace plan, possibly in Florida, a senior official briefed on the matter told AFP.
Yermak was Zelensky's most important ally but in Kyiv, his opponents say he has accumulated power, gate-keeps access to the president and ruthlessly sidelines critical voices.
A former film producer and copyright lawyer, he came into politics with Zelensky in 2019, having previously working with the now-president during his time as a popular comedian.
Yermak was widely considered the second-most influential man in the country and even sometimes nicknamed "vice-president".
"Yermak doesn't allow anyone to get to Zelensky except loyal people," a former senior official who worked with Zelensky and Yermak told AFP, describing him as "super paranoid".
"He definitely tries to influence almost every decision," they added. A senior source in Zelensky's party said Yermak's influence over the president was akin to "hypnosis".
Speaking after the raid on Yermak, the European Union backed the work of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies.
"We have a lot of respect for those investigations which show that the anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine are doing their work," said European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho.
Zelensky had in the summer tried to strip the independence of NABU and SPO, triggering rare wartime protests and forcing him to walk back the decision after criticism from the EU.
Yermak had been a stalwart by Zelensky's side throughout the war. The two men are seen together on official photos of almost all presidential events.
According to media reports, their beds stand side by side in the presidential office's underground bunker, and in their free time, they play table tennis, watch movies or work out.
But he is widely unpopular in society and distrusted by two-thirds of the population, according to a March 2025 poll by the Razumkov Centre, an NGO.
