Rustem Umyerov became the new Minister of Defense
6.09.2023 - 15:00
Today, September 6, the Verkhovna Rada voted for the new Minister of Defense — ex-head of the State Property Fund Rustem Umyerov.
In this position, he replaced Oleksiy Reznikov, who was dismissed the day before.
It will be recalled that Umerov’s candidacy was proposed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the president, “the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction – both with the military and with society as a whole.”
Rustem Umyerov was born in 1982 in Samarkand, Uzbek SSR, in a family of Crimean Tatars. Umerov is a graduate of the National Academy of Management, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in finance.
Umerov is a co-founder and member of the Board of Trustees of the National Welfare Fund of Crimea. He was a delegate to the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar people of the fifth (2007) and sixth (2012) convocations. Since 2007, he has been an adviser to the leader of the Crimean Tatar people, Mustafa Dzhemilev, and was his assistant-consultant on public grounds in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth convocations of the Council.
In the spring of 2022, Rustem Umyerov joined the delegation of Ukraine, which took part in several stages of negotiations with the Russian Federation. He was present at the talks in Belarus and at the talks in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, where Ukraine first voiced an initiative on future security guarantees.
Umerov was also one of those who facilitated a large exchange of prisoners in September 2022, when Ukraine returned 215 people, including 188 defenders of Azovstal and Mariupol, including Azov commanders.
During the time of Umerov’s work in the State Property Fund, it was possible to get UAH 5.2 billion from small privatization. — 3.8 billion from privatization tenders, as well as debts to be paid by the new owners and VAT.
Also, the new Minister of Defense at one time proposed to put up for auction the shares of Centerenergo, the Odesa Port Plant and the United Mining and Chemical Company.
