Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Yevhenii Khmara, a senior intelligence and counterterrorism official, as acting defense minister on Thursday after a cabinet shake-up that has drawn protests in Kyiv and other cities.
Zelensky said in a post on Telegram that he plans to ask parliament to confirm Khmara as defense minister once the required legal steps are finished. Until then, Khmara holds the job in an acting capacity, filling one of the most sensitive posts in Ukraine’s wartime government.
The move follows Zelensky’s dismissal earlier this week of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a decision that triggered public anger and demonstrations across Ukraine. Those protests continued on Friday, according to reports from Ukraine.
Parliament approved most of Zelensky’s new cabinet on Thursday, but the defense and foreign minister roles were left open. Ukrainian law requires the president to nominate candidates for those two ministries separately, so they were not handled with the broader cabinet vote.
Who Khmara is
Khmara is a major general and has served since January as acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU. He took over that role after the removal of Vasyl Malyuk.
Before leading the SBU on an acting basis, Khmara ran the agency’s Alpha Special Operations Center. The unit handles counterterrorism missions, intelligence support and, according to the reporting, has been involved in some of Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian targets.
Khmara also participated in operations at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 to push Russian forces out of the Kyiv region.
Zelensky framed the appointment around Ukraine’s growing reliance on long-range, technology-heavy operations against Russia. In his Telegram post, he said Khmara had gained “extensive” and “in many respects unprecedented” experience conducting such strike operations, adding that this was where Ukraine’s defense should be focused during the war.
That is Zelensky’s case for the appointment. It is also a political gamble: replacing Fedorov has already put pressure on the president, and moving an SBU general into the Defense Ministry invites legal scrutiny as well as public debate over the direction of Ukraine’s military leadership.
Legal questions
Several Ukrainian lawmakers questioned whether Khmara can legally take the defense job while he is a serving military officer. They said Ukrainian legislation requires the defense minister and deputy defense ministers to be civilians.
The challenge does not appear to have stopped the acting appointment, but it signals that Zelensky may face resistance before any formal parliamentary confirmation process.
After Khmara’s move to the Defense Ministry, his first deputy, Oleksandr Poklad, is expected to become acting head of the SBU.
This story draws on original reporting from The Record.
