Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced his defense minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Sunday, citing the need for “fresh perspectives” amid ongoing counteroffensive and EU-driven anti-corruption efforts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday announced he was replacing Kyiv’s defense minister Oleksiy Reznikov, calling for “new approaches” in the ministry, a year and a half into Russia’s invasion.
Reznikov, appointed three months before Moscow’s invasion, has led Kyiv’s negotiations to equip its forces with modern weaponry from allies.
His removal, announced in a video late in the evening, comes in the midst of Kyiv’s counteroffensive and during Ukraine’s general push against corruption in response to EU requests.
It also paves the way for a major change in Ukraine’s defense circles.
“Oleksiy Reznikov has been through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Zelensky said in his daily evening address. “I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large.”
Reznikov, a 57-year-old lawyer with little military experience, has become one of the best-known faces of Kyiv’s war effort.
Several corruption scandals have recently come to light in the country. One of them implicates the Ministry of Defense which, according to Ukrainian media, signed a contract in the fall of 2022 with a Turkish company for the supply of winter uniforms, the price of which tripled after Signature.
At the end of August, Oleksiï Reznikov assured that the prices charged corresponded to what was offered by manufacturers in Turkey.
In January, Reznikov kept his job but his deputy was forced to resign after the defense ministry was accused of signing food contracts at prices two to three times higher than current rates for basic foodstuffs.
“The stress that I have endured this year is hard to measure precisely. I am not ashamed of anything,” Reznikov said at the time, adding: “My conscience is absolutely clear.”
Announcing an internal audit of procurement procedures, he admitted the ministry’s own anti-corruption department had “failed” to do its job and needed to be “completely rebooted”.
A Muslim to replace a Jew
President Zelensky proposed replacing Mr. Reznikov, a 57-year-old lawyer, with Rustem Umerov, 41, a Crimean Tatar and head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine. “I expect Parliament to support this candidate,” declared the Ukrainian president.
Umerov is a prominent member of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented his country in sensitive negotiations with Russia. He was born in Soviet Uzbekistan, the country to which the Crimean Tatars were exiled under Stalin. He returned to Crimea in independent Ukraine as a child when Tatars were allowed to return in the 1980s and 1990s… before fleeing again during Russian annexation in 2014.
Umerov started in the telecommunications sector in 2004 and was elected a deputy of the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, in 2019. In September last year, he was appointed director of the Property Fund of the State, a particularly difficult role in Ukraine where the privatization process is rife with corruption.
Rustem Umerov is the second senior Muslim official in the Ukrainian government, along with Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova, who is also a member of the Crimean Tatar community.
For the record, several Arab and Muslim medias chose to headline Sunday on the fact that President Zelensky replaced a Jewish minister with a Muslim.
Katrine Dige Houmøller & Georges Haddad, with AFP
