Ukraine is set to replace Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov with the chief of its military spy agency, a close ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, in a reshuffle at the forefront of Ukraine’s war campaign.
Reznikov would be transferred to another ministerial job and replaced by Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR military intelligence agency, said David Arakhamia, a senior lawmaker and chief of Servant of the People parliamentary bloc.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov gestures as he addresses a press conference with French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, as part of Reznikov’s official visit, at the Hotel de Brienne, the French Ministry of Armed Forces, in Paris on 31st January, 2023. PICTURE: Julie Sebadelha/Pool via Reuters.
“War dictates changes in personnel policy,” Arakhamia said on the Telegram messaging app.
He said that Ukraine’s “force” agencies – like the defence ministry – should not be headed by politicians, but by career defence or security officials.
Arakhamia did not say when the move would be formalised. There was no immediate comment from Reznikov.
Asked earlier at a news conference about media reports of his possible exit from the ministry, the defence minister told reporters that any decision was up to Zelenskiy.
Reznikov, 56, became defence minister in November, 2021, just a few months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February, 2022.
During the war he fostered relationships with Western defence officials and helped oversee the receipt of billions of dollars of military assistance – including rocket launchers and tanks – to help Kyiv fend off the Russian invasion.
As a wartime defence minister, Reznikov singled out Ukraine’s “de facto” integration into the NATO military alliance as a top priority, even if joining the bloc was not immediately possible de jure.
During his tenure as defence minister, he spoke out strongly about wartime corruption, which he said was akin to “marauding”.
But in recent weeks his own defence ministry became embroiled in a corruption scandal over an army food contract that envisaged paying vastly inflated prices.
One of his deputy ministers has been fired and named a suspect in the scandal, and another one has since resigned separately.
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Meanwhile, fierce battles are raging in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region as Russia intensifies pressure before the first anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday.
“Things are very difficult in Donetsk region – fierce battles,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “But however difficult it is and however much pressure there is, we must endure…We have no alternative to defending ourselves and winning.”
Russia, he said, was applying increased pressure to “make up for its defeats last year. We see that on various sectors of the front and also pressure in terms of information.”
And in the Black Sea port of Odesa, repair crews were working round the clock to restore power systems following a fire that left hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity, Zelenskiy said.
The mass blackout – though attributable to a fire – was one of many that have hit Ukraine’s grid since Russia focused in October on attacking energy infrastructure as part of its invasion of Ukraine.
“Repair work is going on round the clock. The situation at this time is that hundreds of thousands of people in Odesa region are without power,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Zelenskiy said that such disruptions in Ukrainian cities “could not have happened” before the onset of Russian attacks on power generation sites over several weeks, some of which involved dozens of missiles at a time.
Zelenskiy did not say how long the repair works would take, but Ukrainian officials said earlier they could take weeks.
– With NICK STARKOV
