“I have decided to replace the Defense Minister of Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily address on Sunday, September 3. “Oleksiï Reznikov has lived through more than 550 days of war. I believe the ministry needs new approaches and new ways of interacting with the military as well as with broader civil society,” the Head of State continued.
Several corruption scandals have recently come to light in the country. One of them involves the Ministry of Defense which, according to Ukrainian media, signed a contract in the fall of 2022 with a Turkish company for the supply of winter uniforms, the price of which tripled after Signature. At the end of August, Oleksiï Reznikov had assured that the prices invoiced corresponded to what was offered by the manufacturers in Turkey. This is the second alleged corruption scandal related to army supplies to rock the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
Appointed Minister of Defense three months before the Russian invasion, Oleksiï Reznikov had become the face of the Ukrainian war effort, working in particular to convince the Western allies to equip the army of Kiev with heavy tanks, howitzers or systems Patriot air defense.
The successor to 57-year-old lawyer Oleksiy Reznikov will be Crimean Tatar Rustem Umerov, former head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, he also announced. He “should become the head of the [Defence] Ministry,” the Ukrainian president said. “I expect Parliament to support this candidate.”
