Andriy Yermak, acting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, and some Ukrainian defense officials, arrived in Washington, D.C., on June 3 to meet with Trump administration officials, and with Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, apparently to go around President Donald Trump and his arrangement of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and directly appeal to Congress to open the spigots to fund Ukraine. Under President Trump, only limited amounts of U.S. government money have gone to Ukraine. The visit could be part of a coup process against Trump’s policy.
The Yermak trip appears to be directly coordinated with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who are sponsoring S.1241—Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, which would impose 500% tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium, and other exports. (The twosome claim to have 82 Senators who support the bill.) They met with Zelenskyy on May 31 in Kiev, with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on June 1, and with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Berlin the next day, apparently to work out some joint action. “I would expect next week that the Senate will start moving the sanctions bill,” Graham said during a press conference in Ukraine on May 31.
