Ukraine’s Zelensky appoints Crimean Tatar as defence minister
Rustem Umerov replaces Oleksiy Reznikov after the defence ministry was rocked by a series of corruption scandals.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has tapped a Crimean Tatar executive to be the country’s new minister of defence, changing the ministry’s leadership amid procurement scandals as Ukrainian troops fight to advance toward the Crimean Peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
The new appointee, Rustem Umerov, until now the head of Ukraine’s state property fund and a special presidential envoy, played a key role in some of Ukraine’s most sensitive diplomatic negotiations since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
If confirmed by parliament in coming days, Umerov would become the most senior of several Crimean Tatar officials in the upper levels of the Ukrainian government, a sign of the community’s wholehearted embrace of the Ukrainian cause and of Kyiv’s commitment to retake the peninsula.
The Tatars used to run Crimea until Russian Empress Catherine II annexed the peninsula in 1783 and dismantled the Crimean Tatar state, which was affiliated with the Ottoman Empire. Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar people to Central Asia and northern Russia in 1944, and the surviving Tatars and their descendants were only allowed to return to Crimea in the late 1980s. They currently make up roughly one-ninth of Crimea’s population.
The former minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, a lawyer by training, was heavily involved in lobbying Ukraine’s Western partners for more military supplies, and is credited with helping ensure that the country received ever more sophisticated weapons systems as it stopped the Russian invasion and began to regain lost land.
Zelensky, in a message released Sunday night, didn’t offer a reason for Reznikov’s dismissal. “I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and the society at large,” he said.
The defence ministry was implicated in heavily publicised controversies in recent months as Ukrainian media discovered that officials were purchasing food and, later, winter uniforms at inflated prices. No evidence has been made available that Reznikov was involved in any corrupt activities, or that any Western military supplies were diverted.
The Ukrainian military was also rocked by corruption scandals at the regional recruitment offices, where several senior executives have been detained on charges of running rackets that allowed men to avoid mobilisation and service on the front line by paying bribes. With losses mounting on the Zaporizhzhia front, corruption in mobilisation matters has become a highly charged political issue.
Western critics of military aid to Ukraine have seized on allegations of corruption as a reason to cut that vital assistance, increasing pressure on the Zelensky administration to show that it is serious about tackling graft.
On Friday, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with leaders of Ukraine’s anticorruption institutions, underscoring the importance of independent and impartial investigation, prosecution and adjudication of “corruption cases no matter where they lead,” according to a White House statement.
Ukrainian defence ministers, particularly in wartime, don’t have anywhere near the authority of a US secretary of defence, and Reznikov’s replacement is unlikely to lead to material changes on the battlefield.
The commander-in-chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, oversees the campaign, while overall strategy is determined at frequent meetings of the Stavka, the high headquarters that is headed by Zelensky and includes both the military and the civilian leadership.
The Ukrainian defence minister’s role in the past 18 months focused above all on procurement matters, one of the reasons Reznikov was spending a large amount of time travelling to meetings and conferences abroad.
Umerov, who served as a MP for an opposition party before the war, became an important member of the Ukrainian negotiating team with Russia within days of the February 24, 2022, invasion, travelling for peace talks in Belarus. He and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who visited Kyiv as he attempted to mediate a deal, developed mysterious symptoms consistent with poisoning at the time, but have since recovered.
Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine floundered after Ukraine repelled Russian forces around Kyiv in late March 2022, and subsequently found evidence of massacres perpetrated by Russian troops in the town of Bucha near the capital.
Appointed as Zelensky’s special envoy, Umerov has fostered close ties in the Muslim world, particularly with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he most recently met a week ago.
Negotiations with Turkey were instrumental in securing last year a deal with Russia to start exporting Ukrainian grain. Umerov also played a major role in a September 2022 agreement that involved the mediation of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and led to an exchange of hundreds of prisoners, including the commanders of Ukrainian forces who had been taken captive in Mariupol.
“Mr Umerov doesn’t need any additional introductions,” Zelensky said in his Sunday announcement.
The Wall Street Journal
More Coverage
When the hurricane relief worker turns out to be a neo-Nazi
The contentious US presidential race that has sharply politicised the storms is providing a new opening for hate groups that were already on the rise.
Displaced alligators add to post-hurricane distress
Wildlife experts are advising Floridians to leave the animals alone in the wake of Milton leaving at least 16 dead, millions without power.