Rustem Umerov, announced Sunday evening by Volodymyr Zelensky as the next defense minister, is a prominent leader of the Crimean Tatar community. Aged 41, he was born in what was then the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where his family had been exiled under Stalin, and was a child when his family resettled in Crimea when the Tatars were allowed to return there. in the 1980s and 1990s.
He started in the telecoms industry in 2004, and has been an MP since 2019. In parliament, he was co-chair of the Crimean Platform, which coordinated international diplomatic efforts to reverse Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. For many years he was an adviser to the historical leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev.
After the annexation of Crimea as after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Rustem Umerov has, on several occasions, participated in discreet negotiations with Moscow, in particular on exchanges of prisoners and evacuations of civilians. In September 2022 he was appointed head of the State Property Fund, a prominent position in a country where the privatization process is plagued by corruption.