“He’s a zero problem person,” one source in Kyiv told The Guardian in September 2023, the week Volodymyr Zelenskiy picked Rustem Umerov to run Ukraine’s defence ministry. The description did not survive the job. By the end of his time in government service, Umerov was being questioned as a witness in the “Energoatom” corruption case, though no formal charges were brought against him.
His route to the top is unusual. Umerov was born in Samarkand, in Soviet Uzbekistan, to a Crimean Tatar family deported from Crimea in the 1940s. The family went back to Crimea when Tatars were allowed to return in the 1980s and 1990s. Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
Telecoms first, then money
Umerov started in the private sector. In 2004 he joined one of Ukraine’s leading mobile operators. Nine years later, in 2013, he set up his own investment company, ASTEM, along with the ASTEM Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in finance, Reuters noted.
He entered parliament in 2019 as a deputy for the pro-European Holos party and served as co-chair of the Crimea Platform, a diplomatic effort aimed at reversing Russia’s annexation. Since 2020 he has also sat on a government task force working on a strategy to end the occupation of Crimea. For years he advised Mustafa Dzhemilev, the longtime Crimean Tatar leader.
In September 2022 he took over the State Property Fund, the agency that sells state assets to private investors. The fund had a reputation for corruption scandals. Reuters reported that Umerov is credited with turning it round and that he relaunched sales of state property, raising record proceeds for the state during the war.
The negotiator
Umerov was on the Ukrainian team that sat down with Russia in March 2022, a month after the full-scale invasion began. The Guardian reported that he also took part in behind-the-scenes talks with Russian officials, including on prisoner exchanges and civilian evacuations. He joined the talks on the UN-brokered deal that let Ukraine ship grain through the Black Sea, and on swaps involving Azov fighters captured at Mariupol in 2022. People close to him described him to Reuters as a talented negotiator.
Contacts abroad helped. The Guardian noted his close personal relations with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and with Saudi Arabia.
Defence, security council, intelligence
Zelenskiy announced Umerov as the successor to Oleksii Reznikov in a video address on 3 September 2023, saying parliament “knows this person well” and that he “does not need any additional introductions.” Lawmakers approved him on Wednesday of that week. He was 41. The Guardian read the pick as a signal that Kyiv was determined to expel Russia from Crimea, citing defence ministry sources.
The tenure ran from September 2023 to July 2025 and, according to the Kyiv Independent, was marred by procurement scandals and allegations of abuse of power. In July 2025 he moved to secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and in that post he became Ukraine’s chief representative in talks with the United States and Russia, Meduza reported.
On 3 August 2026 Zelensky appointed him head of the Foreign Intelligence Service by decree and named former Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko to the security council post. The president said Umerov would keep coordinating the Drone Deal initiative and stay involved in peace talks. “He has greater capacity to deal with these issues simultaneously,” Zelensky told diplomats that day. The trilateral negotiations with Russia and the U.S. have been stalled since February, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Sources
- Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s negotiator with Russia and the U.S., to head Foreign Intelligence Service — Meduza
- President's top ally Umerov appointed head of Foreign Intelligence Service — Kyiv Independent
- Rustem Umerov: who is Ukraine’s next defence minister? — The Guardian
- Who is Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's new defence minister? — Reuters
