Replacing Reznikov as Ukraine’s defense minister, Zelenskyy believes that new leadership is required

Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar congressman, will replace Oleksii Reznikov as defense minister this week, according to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who made the announcement on Sunday. Reznikov had experienced “more than 550 days of full-scale war,” according to Zelenskyy, who made the revelation on his official Telegram account.

Zelenskyy later said in his evening speech that he thinks “the Ministry needs new approaches and different formats of interaction both with the military and with society.” “This guy is well known to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament), and Umerov doesn’t need to be introduced further. I anticipate parliamentary support for this candidacy, the president assured the people.

Since September 2022, lawmaker Umerov, 41, of the opposition Holos party, has led the State Property Fund of Ukraine. He took part in the exchange of political prisoners, children, civilians, and prisoners of war in addition to the evacuation of inhabitants from occupied areas. Umierov participated in talks with Russia on the grain agreement approved by the U.N. as a member of the Ukrainian delegation.

The purchase of military jackets by the Ministry of Defense was the subject of controversy in August. Investigative journalists from Ukraine said that the materials were bought for a price that was three times more than usual and that summer coats were ordered in place of winter ones. The price of the jackets in the customs documentation from the supplier was $29 per unit, while the Ministry of Defence paid $86 per unit. During a press conference last week, Reznikov refuted the accusations.

In Delaware on Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden informed reporters that he was aware Zelenskyy had taken over as his defense director. In response to the question, Biden said, “Not publicly.” Zelenskyy’s declaration came after reports that two persons had been sent to the hospital as a result of a 312-hour Russian drone attack on a port in the Odesa area of Ukraine on Sunday.

In order to negotiate the restart of food supplies from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain deal that Moscow withdrew from in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are scheduled to meet the day before the assault on the harbor in Reni.

In the early hours of Sunday, Russian troops launched 25 Shahed drones built in Iran along the Danube River, 22 of which were shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram. Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that Russia was behind the attack in an effort “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”

The strike was directed against petroleum storage facilities that feed military equipment, according to a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

On Monday, the long-awaited summit between Putin and Erdogan is scheduled to take place in Sochi on Russia’s southwest coast. The two will talk about reviving the Black Sea grain program, which the Kremlin withdrew from six weeks ago, according to Turkish authorities.

Nearly 33 million metric tons (36 million tons) of grain and other goods were able to depart three Ukrainian ports securely thanks to the accord, which was mediated by the UN and Turkey in July 2022.

Russia withdrew from the pact, however, stating that a separate agreement, which promised to ease barriers to Russian shipments of food and fertilizer, had not been kept. Despite the fact that Moscow has been exporting record volumes of wheat since last year, the city claimed that insurance and shipping regulations were hindering its agricultural exports.

The Sochi meeting comes after discussions between the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey on Thursday, during which Russia provided the West with a list of steps that needed to be taken before Ukraine’s Black Sea exports could restart. Erdogan has expressed support for Putin’s stance. In July, he said that in regards to the Black Sea agreement, Putin had “certain expectations from Western countries” and that it was “crucial for these countries to take action in this regard.”

Three individuals were killed in two separate Russian artillery assaults in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Sunday. According to the Prosecutors’ Office in Ukraine, an 85-year-old man was identified as one of the victims after being trampled under his own home’s debris.

Another Russian assault on Ukraine’s Kherson area resulted in the death of a 36-year-old man. Russian bombardment on the town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon resulted in the murder of a police officer, according to Ukrainian prosecutors, who revealed on Sunday that they had launched a war crimes inquiry into the incident.

During the incident, which occurred in the northeastern Sumy area of Ukraine, two more police officers and one civilian sustained injuries.