Ukraine’s incoming defense minister Rustem Umerov — NV profile

The current head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU) and former MP from the Holos parliamentary faction, Rustem Umerov, could replace Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov this week.

Read also: Mini cabinet shuffle likely as Zelenksyy looks to replace embattled Defense and Culture ministers

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed in an evening address on Sept. 3 that he had decided to replace the defense minister and would submit Umerov’s candidacy to Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The Defense Ministry needs “new approaches and other formats of interaction both with the military and with society as a whole,” the president said.

“Now Rustem Umerov should lead the ministry. The Verkhovna Rada knows this person well, and Mr. Umerov needs no further introductions. I expect the parliament to support this candidate.”

David Arakhamia, leader of the ruling Servant of the People parliamentary faction, announced that the “personnel reshuffle” would take place this week.

Read also: Parliamentary anti-corruption head responds to Defense Minister’s ‘resignation challenge’

Earlier, MP from the Holos faction, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, and MP from the European Solidarity faction, Oleksiy Honcharenko, reported that Reznikov might be appointed Ukraine’s new ambassador to the UK after stepping down as defense minister.

NV tells about 41-year-old Umerov who may become the first representative of the Crimean Tatar people to head the Defense Ministry.

Family deportation, return to Crimea, and education

Rustem Umerov was born in 1982, far from his native Crimea, in the city of Samarkand of the then Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (now Uzbekistan). He comes from a family of Crimean Tatars who were forcibly deported from Alushta in May 1944 during the genocide carried out by Stalin’s regime – the forced eviction of the peninsula’s indigenous population.

Read also: UN commission has not found ‘sufficient evidence’ of genocide in Ukraine

Umerov’s family, particularly his parents and older brother, were able to return to Crimea only during the repatriation of Crimean Tatars amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He graduated from a Crimean boarding school in the Bakhchysarai district, was a scholarship holder of the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX) funded by the U.S. Department of State. The program provides students with scholarships, enabling them to travel to the United States, study at a high school for one academic year, living with a host family.

Umerov received a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in finance from the National Academy of Management in Kyiv. While still a student, he continued to participate in international projects and communities: the Canadian-Ukrainian Parliamentary Program, the American-Ukrainian Leadership Program, joined the work of the European Youth Parliament, the European Students’ Forum AEGEE, the European Law Students’ Association, etc.

Umerov is married and has three children.

Career, social and human rights activism before standing for parliament

In 2004-2010, Umerov worked at Lifecell, a major mobile operator in Ukraine, as a corporate department head. He also managed the legal support and logistics areas.

In 2010-2013, he was the managing director of ICG Investments and iCapital.

Read also: Strikes on depots in Crimea more significant than Kerch Bridge attack, says former Aydar commander

Later, together with his brother Aslan Ömer Qırımlı, Umerov founded the ASTEM investment company, which managed investments in communications, information technology and infrastructure. At the same time, the ASTEM Foundation is one of the donors of U.S. Stanford University’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders program, which is designed to train Ukrainian politicians, lawyers, social entrepreneurs, businessmen, and leaders of public organizations. For example, the Ukrainian Navy’s Yany Kapu raid tugboat, captured by Russia in the Kerch Strait in November 2018, was later repaired thanks to the ASTEM Foundation.

In 2012, Umerov also became a co-founder and board member of the Crimean International Business Association.

During all these years, he continued to make efforts to preserve the Crimean Tatar culture and expand the opportunities of its representatives in Ukraine.

In 2007, Umerov was one of the founders of the Qırım Tatar Cemiyeti NGO and the Bizim Qırım international organization, which is aimed at preserving national interests and promote the restoration of the political, socio-economic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights of the Crimean Tatar people.

In 2014, he co-founded the Evkaf charitable foundation, which provided assistance in the development of Muslim communities and promoted their civic activities.

Read also: US strongly condemns persecution of Crimean Tatars by Russia – Blinken

In addition, Umerov was a delegate of the Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar people of the fifth (2007) and sixth (2012) convocations of the Ukrainian parliament.

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.

In 2012, he was also a trustee of the parliamentary candidate in the 10th district of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ahtem Chiygoz.

Read also: Independence Day messages, Crimea raid, how the bridge was bombed

In addition, Umerov is a co-founder and a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Welfare Fund of Crimea, an international charitable organization that finances strategic national programs and supports the least socially protected Crimean Tatars.

Umerov has also been one of the key figures in the exchange of Crimean political prisoners and prisoners of war for many years.

“All negotiations began in 2014,” he said in an interview with NV’s sister publication Ukrainska Pravda.

“Political prisoners appeared, and I was the person who, in fact, oversaw this direction from the Mejlis.”

Parliamentary career

In 2019 parliamentary elections, Umerov was first elected as a lawmaker from the Holos party (he ran at No. 18 on the list as a nonpartisan candidate).

During his work in the parliament, Umerov performed many functions in various roles, including:

• secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk, Luhansk oblasts and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea;

• deputy head of the permanent delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe;

• co-chairman of groups on inter-parliamentary relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey;

• co-chairman of the Crimean Platform deputy association (since 2020), the one that develops bills related to the temporarily annexed peninsula, the initiative regarding Crimean political prisoners, and sanctions;

• a member of friendship groups for inter-parliamentary relations with Israel, the People’s Republic of China, the UK, the United States, Japan, and Canada;

• a member of the group for the development of the state strategy for the de-occupation of Crimea and Sevastopol (since September 2020), which was created at the National Security and Defense Council. Based on its findings, the Strategy for the De-occupation and Reintegration of Crimea was approved even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Read also:

• Russia claims another Ukrainian attempt to strike the Crimean Bridge with drones

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During his work as a legislator, Umerov co-authored almost 100 bills with other lawmakers, contributing to the adoption or promotion such documents as:

• the bill on the abolition of the Crimea free economic zone, which stipulated that Ukraine would not supply water to Crimea until its de-occupation;

• bills on indigenous peoples (passed in July 2021) and on the status of the Crimean Tatar people;

• resolutions of the Verkhovna Rada regarding the “illegal detention of the first deputy head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Nariman Dzhelialov, and other representatives of the Crimean Tatar people” by Russia in occupied Crimea;

• the appeal of the Verkhovna Rada to commemorate the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people and condemn violations of the rights and freedoms of the Crimean Tatars by Russia to the United Nations, the European Parliament, the parliamentary assemblies of the Council of Europe, the OSCE, NATO, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, the governments and parliaments of the world countries (the appeal was backed by over 300 MPs);

• parliamentary hearings on the de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea and Sevastopol, whose findings were supposed to become part of the Sustainable Development Strategy for Ukraine by 2030.

In August 2021, Zelenskyy awarded Umerov with the 3rd Degree Order of Merit.

Peace talks with Russia, poisoning, the State Property Fund: activities after Russia’s full-scale invasion

In the spring of 2022, being a lawmaker, Umerov became a member of the Ukrainian delegation that took part in several rounds of peace talks with Russia. He attended both the negotiations in Belarus and in Istanbul, Turkey (March 29, 2022), where Ukraine first voiced an initiative regarding future security guarantees.

That’s how he shared his impressions of contacts with the Russians at that time: “Since Russia is a country of absolute verticality, the Russian negotiators come with a certain mandate,” he told NV.

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“There is often a stereotype that I don’t understand that there are supposedly strong Russians who set conditions for us, while Ukrainians supposedly must react to them. It’s not like that. We’re having very emotional negotiations, but we’ll never be in a weak position. People who go to these negotiations are very well aware of where they are going. We’re protecting our country, our homes, this already gives us a competitive advantage. We’re talking about the facts taking place on our land, and we’re expressing our opinion. And we should understand that the positions formed by the Russian negotiators, with the terms ‘Nazis,’ ‘threat of Russia’ regarding Ukraine, where Russia has unleashed and is waging a destructive war, really look beyond logic and rationality. It’s hard but they have to face the objective reality.”

Umerov also shed light on the role of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in these contacts, calling him a person who “on the one hand mediates this process, and on the other hand, as a person without a diplomatic background, helps to establish an informal communication channel.”

Later Umerov said the rumors about his poisoning during the negotiations with Russia really had a basis.

“It happened,” Umerov said in an interview with NV in the autumn of 2022.

“I don’t want to answer where it happened, how it happened, how it happened, with whom it happened, etc. Colleagues are still dealing with this issue.”

Umerov was one of those who facilitated a major prisoner swap in September 2022, when Ukraine returned 215 people, including 188 defenders of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and Mariupol, including commanders of the Azov Regiment. Fifty-five people, including former pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, were then handed over to Russia.

The Verkhovna Rada appointed Umerov as the new SPFU head on Sept. 7, 2022. His predecessor, Dmytro Sennychenko, was dismissed by the parliament on Feb. 17, 2022, a few days before Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

Announcing the Fund’s plans for 2023, Umerov called the main priority to attract as many investments as possible.

Read also: Ukraine to receive 90% of major global investments only after war’s conclusion — Fiala

“All the money earned by the SPFU goes to strengthening the Defense Forces,” he said.

“The more money the Fund earns, the more weapons the country buys. For this, we need to use state resources more effectively. Strategically important assets must be preserved and developed, receive dividends from them, while unprofitable ones should be liquidated or sold.”

In a recent interview with the Forbes Ukraine magazine, Umerov said that small privatization had brought in a record UAH 2.1 billion ($57.4 million) during the large-scale war. During the previous nine years, the average result amounted to about UAH 400 million ($10.9 million).

Recalling that Ukraine has more than 3,600 state-owned enterprises, Umerov called about 2,000 of them illiquid, which “exist only on paper.”

“The SPFU team plans to liquidate them,” he announced.

“We’ll put the remaining assets on transparent auctions and find effective owners. We’ll keep up to 2% of enterprises, namely strategic state assets, in state ownership. They should generate profits and become the basis of the Sovereign Fund, a new source of attracting international investments.”

In the summer of 2023, the SPFU under his leadership began the privatization of assets seized from Russian oligarchs.

“The aggressor must be punished,” Umerov said.

Read also: Zelenskyy tells G7 ‘principle of preventive security’ will protect democracies from aggressor states

“Former Russian assets will work to restore Ukraine and develop its economy.”

He explained the Fund plans to sell about 100 such assets, mainly real estate and cars, in 2023.

Comments on the possible replacement of Reznikov with Umerov

The appointment of Umerov as the defense minister may become Zelenskyy’s “best decision,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC) said.

The center’s analysts studied Umerov’s work at the SPFU and saw only positive results, despite the fact that the SPFU “has always been one of the most corrupt cesspits.”

Read also: First batch of 122mm munitions produced in partnership with European partners arrives in Ukraine

Umerov has been secretly working on the delivery of heavy weapons since the first days of the war and “often quietly did those things that the Defense Ministry has failed to do,” AntAC noted. He is a member of a group engaged in closed negotiations on the release of prisoners of war, has repeatedly visited the United States for arms negotiations and “knows well how our U.S. partners work.”

The center calls Umerov one of the few officials with a coherent strategic vision of how the defense and security sector should work.

Umerov is “a manager with practical experience in managing complex teams,” “a talented negotiator with perfect English and a U.S. education,” AntAC stressed.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak, first deputy chairman of the parliamentary Finance Committee, called Umerov an “excellent candidate.”

Read also: Ukrainian tax bill fails to meet IMF demands, says MP Zheleznyak

“I think he’s an excellent candidate,” Zheleznyak told NV Radio.

Read also: Umerov refuted the data about Russian offensive from three sides in February

“Frankly speaking, I’m not very objective here since he was a member of our faction for a very long time before being appointed as the head of the State Property Fund. But the State Property Fund has never been a mega reform structure. It’s a rather complex body with thousands of enterprises, with thousands of interests. But Rustem passed a year without a single corruption scandal, which probably characterizes him not only as a decent person but also as a good manager.”

As a negotiator in the international arena, Umerov will be no less effective than Reznikov, Zheleznyak assured.

Read also: Ukraine’s defense minister replaced amid wartime corruption crackdown

“I know how much Rustem values his reputation,” the MP said.

“His perception by people who believed him is very important for him. I’m sure this is his greatest asset, which he won’t let anyone trade. He will never let anyone tell him what to do, what to close his eyes to.”

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine