The head of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, David Arakhamia, announced in his telegram channel about personnel changes in the highest authorities of the country.
According to him, Oleksiy Reznikov, who holds the post of Minister of Defense of Ukraine, will head the Ministry for Strategic Industries to strengthen military-industrial cooperation. Kirill Budanov, the current head of the Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate, will be appointed head of the Defense Ministry.
Vasily Malyuk, who has been acting head of the SBU since July last year, will become the head of the Security Service of Ukraine. The post of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, vacated after the death of the previous head of the department, Denis Monastyrsky, will be taken by his deputy Igor Klimenko, Arakhamia said.
“The logic is the same. The law enforcement agencies at this stage should be headed not by politicians, but by professional security officials,” he said.
Verkhovna Rada deputies Yaroslav Zheleznyak and Oleksiy Goncharenko also wrote about the change of the head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
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present tense
Reznikov has been Minister of Defense since November 2021. Commenting on the information that appeared, Reznikov said that he had not received any proposals. “If suddenly I received such an offer from the President of Ukraine or the Prime Minister, then I would refuse it, because I do not have the expertise that would allow me to be a quality minister of the Ministry for Strategic Industries. Therefore, I think that this mistake,” he told ICTV.
On February 1, the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced an investigation against high-ranking officials of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in the case of corruption in public procurement for the army. At the same time, searches were carried out in Ukraine at the homes of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky and ex-head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov. The presentation of suspicions to high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is connected with the recent scandal with the purchase of food for the Armed Forces of Ukraine at inflated prices.
Prior to this, the heads of five regional military administrations (OVA) were dismissed: the heads of the Dnepropetrovsk (Valentin Reznichenko), Sumy (Dmitry Zhyvitsky), Zaporozhye (Alexander Starukh), Kherson (Yaroslav Yanushevich) and Kyiv (Aleksey Kuleba) OVAs. Kuleba was appointed deputy head of the president’s office, and Kirill Timoshenko, who previously held this post, resigned.
