Ukraine’s next Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, announced Sunday night by President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a prominent leader of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented Kiev in sensitive negotiations with Moscow.
Umerov, 41, was born in what was then the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where the family was in exile under Stalin’s rule, and was still a child when they resettled in the Crimea, when the Tatars were allowed to return there in the 1990s. and 1990s.
He started working in the telecommunications sector in 2004 and has been a member of the Ukrainian parliament since 2019.
In parliament, he was co-chair of the Crimean Platform, which coordinated international diplomatic efforts to reverse Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula.
For many years he was an adviser to the historical leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev.
Russia confirmed the annexation of Crimea in a referendum considered illegitimate by Ukraine and its Western allies.
The Tatars, who make up 12-15% of the Crimean population, largely boycotted the referendum. As a result, Moscow banned the Mejlis, the traditional assembly of the Tatar Muslim minority, classifying it as an extremist organization and jailing many of its members.
Both after the annexation of Crimea and after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, Rustem Umerov participated, several times, in discreet negotiations with Moscow, in particular on prisoner exchanges and civilian evacuation operations.
He was part of the Ukrainian delegation for the negotiations with Moscow that, with the sponsorship of Turkey and the UN, allowed the creation of a maritime corridor for the export of Ukrainian cereals through the Black Sea.
Russia recently withdrew from the agreement, arguing that kyiv and the West were not passing up enough Russian exports.
In September 2022, Umerov was appointed head of the State Property Fund, a highly visible post in a country where the privatization process is undermined by corruption.
The Defense Ministry left to him by his predecessor Oleksiï Reznikov has also been at the center of corruption scandals.
Announcing that he wanted to name him his next defense minister, Zelensky indicated that he would submit the nomination to parliament this week.
“Parliament knows this person well and Mr. Umerov needs no further introductions,” said the Ukrainian president.
Source: TSF
