In this undated photo provided by the Ukrainian Parliament Press Office, Rustem Umerov poses for photo in Kyiv, Ukraine. On Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023 Umerov was appointed Ukraine’s new Defense Minister. Photo: Ukrainian Parliament Press Office via AP

Ukraine’s parliament approved the appointment of former lawmaker Rustem Umerov as Defence Minister on September 6, in the biggest shake-up of the defence establishment since Russia’s invasion 18 months ago.

Mr. Umerov (41) replaces Oleksii Reznikov, who helped secure billions of dollars of Western military aid as Defence Minister but was dogged by media allegations of corruption at the Ministry and sacked by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday.

Mr. Reznikov did not face corruption allegations himself, but says he is the victim of a smear campaign. His removal is not expected to affect Ukraine’s military strategy.

“Our main objective is victory,” Mr. Umerov wrote on Facebook after parliament voted overwhelmingly to back him.

“I will do everything possible and impossible for Ukraine’s victory – when we will liberate every centimetre of our country and each our person.”

Lawmakers had approved Mr. Reznikov’s removal on Monday, after he tendered his resignation following Mr. Zelensky’s decision to dismiss him.

“Welcome aboard, Minister,” the Defence Ministry wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Mr. Reznikov said Mr. Umerov was “a great fit” for the position. “The challenges are many but such are the times in which we live. Unity is the key to our victory,” he said on X.

When proposing Mr. Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, Zelenskiy said new approaches and other forms of interaction with the military and society were needed as Russia’s invasion entered its 19th month.

“To head the defence institution during the full-scale war with Russia is a big responsibility,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. “We expect that the new minister will quickly step into his duties and continue reforms of the defence sector.”

Before his appointment, Mr. Umerov, who speaks English and Turkish, headed Ukraine’s main privatisation agency — the State Property Fund — for about a year.

He was credited for overturning the institution and restarting the efforts to sell loss-making state-owned companies to private investors despite the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday announced the departure of defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov, calling for “new approaches” a year and a half into Russia’s invasion.

The announcement came hours after Ukraine fought off an attack by Russian drones in the southern Odesa region early Sunday that hit a Danube port on the border with NATO member Romania.

“Oleksiy Reznikov has been through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in his daily evening address.

“I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large.”

He nominated Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar who has been head of the State Property Fund since last year, to replace Mr. Reznikov – subject to approval by Ukraine’s parliament.

News of Mr. Reznikov’s removal comes with Kyiv’s counteroffensive underway and amid Ukraine’s general push against corruption in response to EU requests.

Russia meanwhile, continued its military campaign against Ukraine’s infrastructure. For weeks now, since pulling out of a key deal that allowed the safe passage of ships carrying grain, it has launched attacks on targets in the Black Sea and the Danube river.

This latest attack came on the eve of a summit in Russia between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hopes to revive the grain deal.

Ukraine said Russia had hit the Odesa region with a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed drones.

But Kyiv also said that some of the drones hit the Danube area, wounding at least two people in attacks on “civilian industrial” infrastructure.

Russia’s army said it had targeted “fuel storage” facilities in the Ukrainian port of Reni, which lies on the Danube river that separates Ukraine from Romania.

Moscow has targeted the Danube ports of Reni and Ismail – both near Romania and across the war-torn country from fighting hotspots – several times over the last few weeks.

Reni, which also lies close to Moldova, is a sea and river port and important transport hub.

Bucharest’s defence ministry condemned the attacks as “in deep contradiction with the rules of international humanitarian law”. But it stressed that the attacks had not posed any direct threat to Romanian territory.

President Maia Sandu of neighbouring Moldova also denounced the “brutal” attack.

The Odesa region attacks came as Kyiv has claimed some successes in its counter-offensive on the southern front this week.

On Wednesday, Kyiv said it had recaptured the village of Robotyne, calling it a strategic victory that would pave the way for its forces to push deeper into Russian positions towards Moscow-annexed Crimea.

General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, leading the southern counteroffensive, told The Guardian newspaper this weekend that Kyiv’s army has made an important breakthrough by breaching Russian lines near Zaporizhzhia.

“We are now between the first and second defensive lines,” Mr. Tarnavskiy – who led Ukrainian troops to liberate the southern city of Kherson – told the UK paper.

Heavily mined territory had slowed Ukrainian troops, he added, saying sappers had cleared a route by foot and at night.

The paper quoted him as saying that Kyiv’s forces were now back on vehicles and that Russia had redeployed troops to the area.

“But sooner or later, the Russians will run out of all the best soldiers,” Mr. Tarnavskiy said.

“Everything is ahead of us.”

At the same time he admitted difficult losses, saying that “we are losing the strongest and best.”

Russia has not announced another mobilisation, seen as an unpopular measure, but has led an active campaign to attract more men into the military as its Ukraine offensive drives on into a 19th month.

Ex-president and Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that Moscow had recruited 230,000 people into the army since the start of the year, TASS news agency reported.

“Part of them were in the reserves, part of them volunteers and other categories,” he said during a visit to the Far Eastern Russian island of Sakhalin.

In early August, Medvedev said the army had recruited around 230,000 people since the start of the year.

In September last year, the Kremlin made a U-turn on promises not to announce a military draft, announcing a partial call-up to make up for losses on the Ukrainian front that led to the recruitment of 300,000 men.

But the announcement also triggered another wave of emigration from Russia, with hundreds of thousands believed to have fled abroad.