Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar congressman, will replace Oleksii Reznikov as defence minister this week, according to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made the announcement on Sunday.
Zelenskyy published the news on his verified Telegram channel.
“I have made the decision to remove Ukraine’s defence minister. Oleksii Reznikov has experienced a full-scale battle for more than 550 days. I think the Ministry needs fresh ideas and different ways to communicate with the military and the general public. Now the Ministry should be headed by Rustem Umerov,” he stated.
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 declaration was made after officials reported that two persons were sent to the hospital after a 312-hour Russian drone onslaught 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 attack 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.”
According to a statement from the Russian Defence Ministry, the strike targeted gasoline storage facilities that feed military equipment.
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 tonnes (36 million tonnes) 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, though, stating that a separate agreement, which promised to ease barriers to Russian shipments of food and fertiliser, had not been kept.
Despite the fact that Moscow has been shipping record volumes of wheat since last year, the city claimed that insurance and shipping regulations were hindering its agricultural exports.
The Sochi summit 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 stated 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 Prosecutor’s 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 additional police officers and one civilian sustained injuries.
US President Joe Biden said in Delaware on Sunday that he is aware of Zelenskyy replacing his defence chief. Asked if he had any comment, Biden said, “not publicly.”
Zelenskyy’s announcement came after two people were hospitalized following a 3½-hour Russian drone barrage on a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Sunday, officials said.
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