Iran Press/ Europe: Umerov will have a bulging in-tray if and when the Ukrainian parliament approves his appointment.
The change in leadership comes as Ukraine’s relationships with allies and donors enter a new phase. Kyiv is trying to accelerate the training and deployment of F-16 combat planes and acquire a host of other equipment and weapons from its western allies to help push forward its counteroffensive.
But the Defense Ministry is also trying to develop an indigenous weapons production base in concert with western defense firms, including efforts to develop new long-range capabilities that could be used against targets inside Russian territory.
The Defense Minister is also Ukraine’s main interlocutor with western allies through the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. Reznikov, had developed relationships with senior US and European officials through the Group. The next meeting of the Group is later this month.
Umerov has extensive experience as a negotiator. He has been closely involved in prisoner of war exchanges and helped to broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative. In that role, he repeatedly expressed skepticism that Russia would abide by the deal. He is currently the chairman of the State Property Fund, whose mission is to attract investment into Ukraine.
A Crimean Tatar, Umerov was born in 1982 in Uzbekistan, where tens of thousands of the Muslim ethnic minority had been deported by Stalin in 1944. He moved to Crimea as a child in the dying days of the Soviet era.
Umerov is a Muslim, and said last year “Ukrainian Muslims are fighting for Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty.” His background has also enabled him to develop links with the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia which assisted with a high-profile prisoner exchange last year. He was the Ukrainian official who greeted prisoners of war when they arrived in Saudi Arabia.
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