Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has appointed a new defense minister – a general, or more precisely, a former general, Yevhen Khmara, who took the post a month after being appointed acting minister.
Khmara left the military and relinquished his rank of major general literally a day before the vote in order to take up the position at the Defense Ministry – the law requires the ministry to be headed by a civilian.
Khmara’s start
The impressive support Khmara received from lawmakers – 312 votes, significantly more than the simple majority of 226 and the constitutional majority of 300 – indicates that the Presidential Office did serious work with members of parliament.
Khmara himself also enjoys a sufficient degree of trust among various political groups, for different reasons. For some, he is acceptable as a well-known military officer who has been involved in several high-profile special operations by the Security Service (SBU). For others, he is acceptable precisely because he is not as demanding as former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s – since he is still unfamiliar with the workings of such a large institution, he may not continue Fedorov’s decisive reforms, which alarmed the part of the bureaucracy concerned about the security of certain existing schemes.
Some lawmakers were disappointed that the combat general had little understanding of procurement procedures. Parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla described Khmara’s meeting with lawmakers ahead of the vote:
“Questions were put to Khmara – he didn’t answer a single one, everything was in general phrases. It was particularly unpleasant when he was asked how he sees procurement policy, and in response we heard that he works with the General Staff. And when I asked what to do if the General Staff’s requirements lag behind modern warfare and aren’t suitable, he ‘froze’… It’s sad, because this is one of the key problems. The Defense Ministry must have a vision and exercise control, rather than merely perform the function of a supply manager,” Bezuhla said.
However, it shouldn’t be assumed that Khmara doesn’t understand the situation or doesn’t realize where he’s found himself. According to Kyiv Post sources at the Defense Ministry, the general began gradually studying the situation from the inside from his very first day, and Khmara himself has repeatedly stated that he wants to preserve the core of Fedorov’s team.
And, at least for now, the reforms haven’t stopped – on the contrary, the Defense Ministry will finally introduce tenders instead of direct procurement, which often led to abuses and which Fedorov had also sought to implement. Second, food procurement for military personnel will finally be reformed – a battle with monopoly suppliers that has already dragged on for three years, spanning several successive defense ministers.
Still, there are other signals. Kyiv Post sources claim that just a week after Fedorov’s dismissal, some Defense Ministry contractors who were accustomed to working around major defense procurement contractors began receiving work again.
“There are companies like that in our city… when large, ‘fat’ contractors that have taken on a lot of military orders but can’t fulfill them because they lack capacity, they outsource those orders to these companies. Under Fedorov, this was cleaned up somewhat, so that those taking orders would only take on as much as they could actually fulfill. Naturally, these ‘outsourcers’ lost their work. But now they have work again,” a source in one of Ukraine’s northern regional centers told us.
This isn’t a verdict on Khmara’s performance – he only became minister on Wednesday, the same day of this report. It’s a sign of how complex and multilayered the processes at the Defense Ministry are, and how raw and unfinished Fedorov’s reforms remained.
There’s still a lot of work to be done. Will the new minister be able to handle it? Despite his lack of experience with bureaucratic intricacies, many are placing their hopes in him because of his relative youth and persistence.
And what about Fedorov?
Mykhailo Fedorov himself recorded a lengthy video Tuesday, Aug. 18, which he titled “an address to Ukrainians about corruption, the management crisis, and the Ukraine we must build.”
Sitting at a table dressed in black, he said openly that the system of government is in crisis, that parliament should reflect the interests of society rather than a handful of groups, that fighting corruption is a matter of survival and not merely morality, and that elections could be a way out – though difficult to organize, given the ongoing war.
“The enemy is changing its tactics, and we need to make critically important decisions. The country cannot remain without an appointed defense minister… But the problem is much broader than one position. We have to answer the question: how should the state function if the war lasts for years? If it continues for another year, two years, or longer, does that mean Russia will determine when Ukrainians can choose their government?… People cannot live indefinitely in a state where they don’t understand why certain decisions are being made – why some reforms move forward while others stall, why decisions needed at the front today spend months making their way through government offices,” Fedorov said.
The response to the address was mixed. Many people praised Fedorov for naming real problems in the state and proposing ways to address them. But many others were disappointed. Observers noted that elections remain impossible under current circumstances – for the same reasons that made them impossible a year and a half ago, when Donald Trump first called for them after his confrontation with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
More details about the reasons can be found in our in-depth piece here, but, briefly: in elections held amid war, nearly half of Ukraine’s population would be unable to safely and freely express their choice. A million people are on the front lines, several million more are in frontline areas, several million more are in occupied territories, and another 5-6 million are abroad. Ukraine’s major cities – with populations of over a million under constant shelling – would struggle to safely run an election campaign at all. That’s out of a current population of 35 million. And military personnel, many of whom have high approval ratings and would want to run for office, wouldn’t be able to actively participate.
At the same time, while criticizing parliament, Fedorov conspicuously missed the elephant in the room: he said not a word about the president or the Presidential Office, referring throughout only to “the system” and “the authorities.”
The timing of the address also raises questions. He published it only on the evening of Aug. 18 – once it was clear that Zelensky would indeed submit Khmara’s candidacy for defense minister to parliament, and not before. This despite the fact that during an entire month of near continuous protests, Fedorov never addressed the public directly, though he did thank them for their activism.
In the end, it hardly matters how the speech affects Fedorov’s approval ratings, or how Khmara’s answers to lawmakers affect his reputation. One will be judged by his willingness to keep pushing reform through the country’s most complex and lucrative ministry; the other on his political activity going forward, which will require not just vision but decisiveness.