Ukraine's new Defense Minister might signal Kyiv’s future endgame

On September 3rd, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskey announced the country’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov would be replaced in search of a new approach. 

Reznikov’s fate had been long theorized about after financial indecencies in his ministry led to a major government corruption investigation according to The New York Times. 

The Defense Minister was not implicated during the investigation into the mishandling of military contracts but the situation was a stain on the president’s anti-corruption efforts. 

“Oleksii Reznikov has gone through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Zelensky had said in a statement about Reznikov’s tenure as the country’s leading defense figure

“I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large,” Zelensky added. But who was picked to replace Reznikov?

Rustem Umerov was chosen to replace Reznikov as Ukraine's new Minister of Defense and it was quite the consequential choice for Zelensky and his advisors to have made. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

Umerov is currently the Chairman of Ukraine's State Property Fund where he’s gained a lot of credit for weeding out corruption in the country according to The Washington Post. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

More importantly, Umerov is a member of Ukraine's pro-European Holos Party, which is a separate party from the president’s Servant of the People party, a big step in the right direction for political unity with the opposition. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

The new defense minister also has a large network of sources and has been involved in many high-profile negotiations with Russian officials since the beginning of the invasion. 

The Washington Post noted that Umerov was part of the initial delegation of Ukrainians who tried to negotiate peace with Russia in the early days of the conflict before the possibility of an early peace was quashed by Russia's actions throughout Ukraine.  

Umerov also played a role in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Deal and has been a key figure in negotiations that have tried to return children taken from Ukraine to the country. 

“He joined Zelensky for a visit to Saudi Arabia in May and first lady Olena Zelenska in the United Arab Emirates in March,” The Washington Post’s Miriam Berger and Serhiy Morgunov wrote in a recent expose on Umerov. 

Umerov’s accomplishments might make him a great candidate to replace Reznikov but there is likely one other reason Zelensky chose him. Umerov is a Crimean Tatar. 

Ukraine’s new Defense Minister was born in Samarkand when Uzbekistan was still part of the Soviet Union to a family of Crimean Tatars who had come from the peninsula to Uzbekistan as part of the deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland in the 1940s. 

"The deportation of Crimean Tatars is one of the greatest crimes of the Soviet regime," Umerov wrote in a piece for Liga.net in 2021 according to BBC News. "It was started by the tyrants in power at that time in order to exterminate an entire nation."  

Photo Credit: Twitter @rustem_umerov

It’s important to note Ukraine's Crimean Tatars are an ethnic minority of Sunni Muslims inside the country and Umerov has his roots to build Ukraine's diplomatic ties abroad, in particular with the nations of the Persian Gulf. 

The optics of a Jewish president picking a Muslim member of his opposition shows the unity within Ukraine at the moment and also does a lot to dispel Russian myths that the country is led by fascist Neo-Nazis. 

Photo Credit: Twitter @rustem_umerov

The pick could also signal that Kyiv really does intend to make a play for Crimea before they would be willing to negotiate peace with Russia. The 41-year-old Umerov’s ethnic past and recent work to end the peninsula’s occupation is a glaring message to Russia. 

Photo Credit: Twitter @rustem_umerov