The new Defense Minister Rustem Umerov
KYIV (Portal) – Ukraine’s government fired six deputy defense ministers on Monday, two weeks after appointing new defense minister Rustem Umerov.
Rustem Umerov was appointed defense minister earlier this month, replacing Oleskii Renikov.
Oleksii Reznikov, who was appointed in November 2021, has been able to receive billions of dollars in Western military aid since the Russian invasion in February 2022, but his ministry has been marred by corruption allegations that he described as slanderous.
“Start anew. We (have) started. We continue. The ministry continues to work as usual,” wrote Rustem Umerov on Facebook.
The Ukrainian government has not justified these evictions, including that of Hanna Maliar, who regularly gave press conferences about the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the war against Russia.
Hanna Maliar, a war crimes lawyer, has been deputy minister since 2021 and attended a final press conference on Monday.
She was criticized for announcing the recapture of a village in eastern Ukraine by Russian troops last week before backtracking.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; French version Zhifan Liu)