You're reading: Expert says new defense minister has nothing to do with security sphere

Director of Ukraine's Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies Valentyn Badrak has said that it is difficult to predict the activity of new Defense Minister Pavlo Lebedev.

“Unfortunately, I found no experience of work in defense and security
agencies in the biography of the new head of the Defense Ministry,
therefore, it’s definitely a signal for experts that perhaps this is
related to the fact that the president is using staff potential at his
own discretion,” the expert said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine
on Monday.

Badrak said that this was the second minister after Dmytro Salamatin, who has no wide experience of work in defense agencies.

“On the other hand, we see that it has become a tradition in Ukraine,
when people are appointed to new posts in the sphere to which they
previously had no relation. Therefore, today I absolutely cannot predict
how the defense reform will move,” the expert said.

He also noted that such an appointment was political, but it did not contradict a common ideology.

On December 24, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych dismissed
Salamatin as defense minister and appointed Lebedev to this post.
Lebedev is a financier and was elected an MP of the seventh convocation
in constituency No. 224 (Sevastopol).