(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, has resigned after anti-corruption searches on his home and office on Friday morning.

Zelenskyy announced the resignation in an address he posted online Friday.

The head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office, Yermak is the president’s powerful right-hand man and had been leading the negotiations with the United States to end the war with Russia.

Yermak’s fall strips Zelenskyy of his closest adviser and chief negotiator at a moment when he has been under intense pressure to agree to a new peace plan with Russia.

Yermak had increasingly faced suspicion he could be implicated in a sprawling high-level corruption scandal in Ukraine’s energy sector that has rocked the country’s government, already t

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