Rustem Umerov Biography: Rustem Enverovych Umerov (born 19 April 1982) is a Ukrainian politician, businessman, investor, and philanthropist who now serves as Ukraine’s Defense Minister. Umerov is a former deputy chairman of the permanent mission to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a delegate of the Crimean Tatar People’s Qurultay, and an adviser to Mustafa Dzhemilev, the former chair of the Mejlis. Umerov has also served as co-chair of the Crimea Platform diplomatic project, which began in December 2020. In September 2023, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appointed Umerov to replace Oleksii Reznikov as Ukraine’s defense minister.
Rustem Umerov Biography
Rustem Umerov, who is set to become Ukraine’s new defense minister, is a prominent member of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented his country in crucial talks with Russia. Volodymyr Zelenskiy chose Umerov as his successor in a video speech on Sunday night, succeeding Oleksii Reznikov, who is leaving after 22 months in the position. Umerov was born in Soviet Uzbekistan, where his family had been deported under Stalin, and migrated to Crimea, Ukraine, as a child when the Tatars were allowed to return in the 1980s and 1990s. Since annexing the peninsula in 2014, Russia has oppressed Crimea’s Tatars, who make up 12-15% of the country’s 2 million population. The majority still favor Ukraine. The appointment of Umerov is evident.
Rustem Umerov Biography Details
| Born | 19 April 1982 (age 42)
Krasnogvardeysk, Samarkand Oblast, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union
(now Uzbekistan) |
|---|
| Nationality | Crimean Tatar |
|---|
| Political party | Holos |
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| Education | National Academy of Management
Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute |
|---|
| Category | Politician Biography |
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Rustem Umerov
Rustem Enverovych Umerov is a Ukrainian politician, businessman, investor, philanthropist and the current Defence Minister of Ukraine.
Born: 19 April 1982 (age 42 years), Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Education: Natsionalʹna Akademiya Upravlinnya (2012), MORE
Nationality: Ukrainian
Party: Holos
Previous office: People’s Deputy of Ukraine (2019–2022)
Office: Minister of Defence of Ukraine since 2023
Prime Minister: Denys Shmyhal
Career
In 2013, Aslan Ömer Qırımlı Umerov launched ASTEM, an investment company and foundation, alongside his brother. ASTEM invests in telecommunications, information technology, and infrastructure, with a focus on communication towers and fiber-optic networks. The Ukrainian Emerging Leaders program at Stanford University was financed by the foundation. Umerov has served as a Ukraine People’s Deputy for the Holos political party since 2019.[10] In September 2022, he was chosen head of Ukraine’s State Property Fund by the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament). Umerov is the President’s Advisory Council Commissioner for Arab and Muslim Relations in Ukraine. Umerov joined Ukraine’s negotiating team with Russia in February 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, nominated Umerov on September 3, 2023.
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Political activity
Umerov was elected by the Holos party as a People’s Deputy of Ukraine in the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election. He has co-authored about 100 bills, produced a declaration by the Verkhovna Rada on the illegitimacy of Russia’s vote on changes to the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea, and sponsored legislation to abolish the Crimean free economic zone. Umerov spearheaded the construction of 1,000 apartments for internally displaced Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainian citizens, which received Turkish funding. Zelenskyy and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan agreed to develop the flats in early April 2021. Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, and Murat Kurum, the Turkish Minister of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change, signed an agreement in which Turkey.
Personal life
Umerov is a Muslim with Crimean Tatar roots. He speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Turkish fluently. He also speaks Arabic and Crimean Tatar to a basic level.
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A Crimean Tatar born in exile
Umerov, 41, is a Crimean Tatar, a Turkic tribe of Sunni Muslims whose historical homeland is the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia invaded in 2014. Under the command of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, 180,000 Crimean Tatars, including Umerov’s family, were deported from Crimea to Uzbekistan in 1944. He was born in the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Rustam and his family returned to Crimea in 1991 as part of the Crimean Tatar repatriation movement that began in the late 1980s.
A polyglot with finance background
Umerov attended an excellent boarding school and acquired five languages: Ukrainian, Tatar, Russian, Turkish, and English. In 1998, he was sent to the United States to study as part of the US Department of State’s Future Leaders Exchange Program before joining the European Youth Parliament. Umerov started his work in the private sector. In 2004, he started working for one of Ukraine’s biggest mobile operators. In 2013, he founded his own investing firm, ASTEM, and the ASTEM Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in finance. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, he served as an adviser to Mustafa Dzhemilev, the Crimean Tatar Mejlis’ leader.
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Umerov has been a member of a Ukrainian government task team charged with devising a strategy to terminate Crimea’s occupation since 2020. Umerov, a legislator from the pro-European Holos party, was appointed chairman of the public Property Fund in September 2022, an organization that sells public assets to private investors. He is renowned for turning around an institution plagued by corruption problems. He also restarted sales of state property, resulting in record profits for the state during the war. Rustem Umerov attends peace talks with a Russian delegation in Belarus in 2022.
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A skilled negotiator
Umerov, recognized as a skilled negotiator by those close to him, was a part of the Ukrainian delegation that negotiated with Russia in March 2022, one month after Russia’s full-scale invasion. He also took part in discussions on the Black Sea grain trade and prisoner exchanges, notably those involving Ukrainian Azov troops taken during the fighting for Mariupol in 2022. In 2017, he helped secure the release from Russian authorities of Crimean Tatars Ahtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov. He was a part of Zelenskyy’s team on his May visit to Saudi Arabia, and he accompanied first lady Olena Zelenska on her March visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Rustem Umerov Net Worth & Salary
According to the declaration, Umerov rents two apartments in Kyiv with an area of 128.8 m² and 80.6 m². The registered minister lives in an apartment in Kyiv with an area of 95 m² and a cost of 550 000 hryvnias. The wife of Defense Minister Leyla Umerova rents an apartment with an area of 137.4 m² in the USA, and her mother owns a house in the temporarily occupied Crimea — its area is 196.7 m². Rustem Umyerov also declared a rented car Ford Explorer 2016, worth 400 thousand hryvnias.
Last year, the minister received 5 million hryvnias of income from the sale of securities and corporate rights of Black Sea Company LLC. Umerov is the owner of 100% of the corporate rights of this company. Umerov also has the right of claim under the contract of sale of a share in the share capital of the private company “Astem Technologies”. While working at the State Property Fund, he received 131 526 hryvnias of salary, and at the ministry — 442 347 hryvnias.
He declared more than 9.1 million hryvnias as “the amount of the discount from the conversion of the SAFE contract into shares of the company Petcube, Inc.” Umerov also declared $18 200 in unaccepted creditor claims, $9 100 in cash and 180 500 hryvnias in cash. The Minister of Defense has $1.8 thousand and 3.7 million hryvnias in his bank accounts. In 2023, the ministerʼs wife received a salary of 1.44 million hryvnias from Astem Ventures Inc. She also has $1 000 in cash and $8 500 in bank accounts.
