On his Telegram channel, he wrote that the government had decreed that deputy defense ministers Vladimir Gavrilov, Vitaly Deynega, Anna Malyar, Rostislav Zamlinsky, Denis Sharapov and Andrey Shevchenko be dismissed. Ukrainian Defense Ministry State Secretary Konstantin Vashchenko was also fired.
Only First Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Pavlyuk has retained his post, according to TASS.
In early September, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that he had decided to remove Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov from office and proposed replacing him with Rustem Umerov, who was in charge of the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
The Defense Ministry and Reznikov himself have been frequently criticized in Ukraine in connection with corruption scandals. For instance, in January the UNIAN news agency and the Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper published the results of a journalistic investigation whose authors, based on a number of documents, discovered that the Defense Ministry had been buying food supplies for the troops at prices double or triple those found in Kyiv grocery stores. Another scandal broke out in Ukraine in August when reporters found out that, in the fall of 2022, the Defense Ministry had concluded a contract with a Turkish company to purchase 4,900 winter jackets valued at $142,000 but the final price somehow stood at $421,000. Criminal charges have been filed as a result.
MP/PR
