Ukraine to replace defence minister: Reports

A senior lawmaker says that Ukraine will replace Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov with the head of its military spy agency. This is part of a high-profile reshuffle of the cabinet that is happening because of corruption scandals and in preparation for an expected Russian offensive.

Reznikov, who is 56 years old, will be moved to another ministerial position, and Kyrylo Budanov, who is 37 years old and heads Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, will take his place, David Arakhamia said Sunday on the Telegram messaging app.

A close friend of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Arakhamia, said, “War decides who gets to work where.”

Reznikov, a former lawyer who became defence minister in November 2021, just a few months before Russia started its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, was not replaced right away. Zelenskyy did not say anything about it right away.

Reznikov helped Ukrainian forces get weapons from the West, and if he were fired as defence minister, it would be the most high-profile change in a series of resignations and firings that followed a corruption scandal at the end of last month and Zelenskyy’s promise that Ukraine would meet Western standards for clean government.

In the food contracts at the centre of the scandal, the prices were much higher than they should have been. In response to the public outcry, one of Reznikov’s deputy ministers was fired, and two other high-level officials have since left their jobs.

Arakhamia said that during a war, the Defense Ministry and other “force” agencies in Ukraine shouldn’t be run by politicians, but by people with experience in defence or security.

“Kyrylo Budanov will be in charge of the Defense Ministry, which makes perfect sense during a war,” the lawmaker said.

Budanov has been in charge of military intelligence since August 2020. He is a major general.

Ukraine is planning its own counterattack, but is waiting for Western allies to send battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

Arakhamia also said that Reznikov would be made minister of strategic industries, but he didn’t say when the changes would be official.

Reznikov had said earlier on Sunday that it was up to Zelenskyy to decide if there would be a reshuffle and that an internal audit of how the defence ministry buys things was under way. He told reporters that the ministry’s own anti-corruption unit had “failed” to do its job and needed to be “restarted from scratch.”