Explained: Inside Ukrainian shake up that forced Zelensky to replace his defence minister

Rustem Umerov will be Ukraine's new defence minister, replacing Oleksii Reznikov who helmed the administrative apparatus of Ukrainian defence since the beginning of war in the region in February 2022 for a full 550-day period.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Umerov's nomination as the new defence minister and stated that the parliament would vote on it this week.

Rustem Umerov has been named Ukraine's new defence minister | Wikimedia Commons

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Notably, the outgoing Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov is a member of an opposition party Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform and is not a member of Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People party.

Rustem Umerov as Ukrainian defence minister: Top challenges

Umerov will become Ukrainian defence minister when the country has lost an additional 119,000 sq km (46,000 sq mi) territory to Russia, and Kyiv's much-anticipated counter-offensive to reclaim this territory is faltering to the point that it's now reliant on drone attacks to dismantle Russian positions across the frontline.

Russia has taken over42,000 sq km of Ukrainian territory by 2022 (Crimea, and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk collectively known as the Donbas region).

Umerov faces the immediate challenge of preventing further disintegration of the nation at the hands of the Russian offensive, a perpetual conflict that so far has resulted in the loss of 27 per cent of Ukraine's pre-2014 territory.

Umerov is a prominent member of the Crimean Tatar community and has represented Ukraine in delicate negotiations with Russia after what Kyiv says was the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Moscow in March 2014.

Umerov at forefront of reversing Russian annexation of Crimea

Starting his career in the telecom industry in 2004, the 41-year-old was elected to the Ukrainian parliament in 2019.

During his time there, he co-chaired the Crimea Platform, an international diplomatic initiative aimed at reversing Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Umerov has also served as an advisor to the historic leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev.

After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Umerov has been involved in confidential talks with Russian officials, including negotiations for high-profile prisoner exchanges and civilian evacuations.

He has been a key figure in Ukraine's efforts to establish an export corridor for Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, which Russia later withdrew from.

In September of the previous year, he was appointed as the head of the State Property Fund, a challenging position in Ukraine where privatisation has been marred by corruption.

Umerov to be new defence minister: Why Zelensky made the change?

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine cited the need for "new approaches" while announcing Umerov as the country's next defence minister.

The fate of the existing defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, came under intense speculations in Ukraine after financial irregularities in the defence ministry came to light and the government launched a number of investigations into corruption allegations in general.

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"Oleksii Reznikov has gone through more than 550 days of full-scale war," Zelensky said in a statement announcing his decision on Sunday night. "I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large."

At present, Ukraine faces the challenge of expanding its army amid the transition of its Soviet-era arsenal to the Western systems.

Notably, while the West is supplying Ukraine with weapons, the Ukrainian defence forces have been trained to operate Soviet-era weaponry. So, training a war-ravaged force on a different system of weaponry altogether while trying to regain territories lost to Russia, will remain the incoming defence minister's top priority.

In its counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions in the country’s south, Ukraine has deployed US and European armoured vehicles, tanks, artillery and guided rockets with disputed effectiveness.

Umerov's controversial actions after Russian annexation of Crimea

Umerov in April 2021 stated that Ukraine would not supply water to Crimea after its annexation by Russia. Umerov justified this by saying that since Russia has violated international law, it is responsible for the humanitarian needs of the Crimean people.

Umerov's ancestors were accused of being Nazi collaborators

Born in Soviet Uzbekistan, Umerov and his family returned to Crimea in Ukraine during the 1980s and 1990s when the Tatars were allowed to come back from Uzbekistan.

In 1944, Russian leader Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar community (roughly 200,000 in number) and accused them of collaborating with the Nazis. Stalin’s government forcibly loaded most Crimean Tatar onto freight cars bound for Central Asia, where they were to be resettled. Reports suggest that nearly half of the deported died during the ordeal.

Stalin's claim is deemed false by most post-second world war analysis, and has been formally recognised as a crime of genocide or 'cultural genocide'.

Umerov's family funded the restoration of a 17th-century Orta Cami Mosque in Bakhchysarai in an act to regain Crimea's cultural and historical heritage.

The reconstructed mosque, which had been inactive for about 95 years, reopened on 16 August 2013.

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