Zelenskyy's New Defense Chief Has Combat Kudos, But Faces Tough Political Challenge

The man nominated to be Ukraine’s new defense minister is steeped in experience with special forces, drone technology, and the new ways of warfare.

But Yevhen Khmara has stepped into a role where he’ll need the political skills to manage potentially tense relations with the Ukrainian general staff amid ongoing protests against the removal of his predecessor, Mykhaylo Fedorov.

“We know that he comes from special ops with a very good track record,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, head of the Kyiv School of Economics, told RFE/RL, describing Khmara as “direct, straight, very technocratic…some people from the government have a crush on him.”

One former officer of Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said that Khmara spent 90 percent of his time at or near the front line.

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“He knows how to cross the contact line, go in, carry out operations in the occupied territories, and return; he knows how drone units operate,” Ivan Stupak, now a military analyst, told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.

Oleh Rybachuk, head of the Center for Joint Action, a think tank, also underlined Khmara’s combat credentials.

“He is not a political hack, he is principled, he is pro-Ukrainian, he created the special forces unit, Alfa," he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. But, he added, “the Defense Ministry is much more complicated.”

Political Battles

That complexity is underlined by Fedorov's fate.

Fedorov was pushed out by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week amid a bitter row with Ukraine’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrskiy.

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Hundreds of people rallied outside of Zelenskyy’s offices in Kyiv on July 16, a day after Fedorov’s sacking was announced, and those demonstrations continued on July 17.

For many protestors, Fedorov represented a new, tech-savvy way of fighting a war that contrasted with the Soviet-trained Syrskiy.

But Mylovanov believes this is an oversimplification.

“This is completely overblown when people say, oh, Fedorov is gone, so defense tech is gone. That's not true. The appointment of Khmara shows that defense tech is a priority,” said Mylovanov, who was Ukraine's economy minister from 2019 to 2020.

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This is also what Zelenskyy himself said in a social media post on July 16.

“Khmara has gained extensive and, in many respects, unprecedented experience with technological combat operations. This is exactly where our defense efforts should be focused during this war,” he wrote.

Who Is Khmara?

Khmara gained public prominence in January when he was appointed the acting head of the SBU -- the country’s main security and intelligence agency that has been leading the country’s long-range drone strikes on Russia.

Prior to his appointment, from 2023, he was head of Alfa, an SBU special forces unit that has been carrying out the attacks on Russian oil refineries thousands of kilometers from the front line that represent Ukraine’s biggest tangible success in the war this year.

The unit was also responsible for Operation Spiderweb, an audacious attack in June last year in which drones launched from trucks within Russia destroyed long-range bombers at air force bases across the country.

Mylovanov said that, in his SBU role, Khmara also oversaw “nonpublic” companies developing Ukraine’s deadly long-range drones.

“When I fly to the United Arab Emirates and people ask me privately, from their defense companies, their state defense companies, do you know these drones? We want these drones. People name drones which are deployed, designed, and updated in cooperation with or sometimes individually and selectively by the SBU,” he said.

Mylovanov added that Ukraine’s military strategy under Khmara would probably be marked by continuity, with an ongoing focus on deep strikes to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war and undermine its domestic morale.

But the tensions that led to Fedorov’s downfall may also bring Khmara into conflict with the generals. Rybachuk, who was deputy prime minister for several months in 2005, said that Khmara’s military record may not help him in such a fight.

“There will inevitably be a confrontation between them,” he said. “In such palace intrigues, honest people, honest politicians who are trying to clear up corruption, become victims.”

Many protesters have suggested that Fedorov was brought down for his opposition to high-level corruption surrounding defense procurement. Stupak said he believed Khmara would continue such efforts.

“I think he’ll allow a certain number of specialists and military counterintelligence officers to join the Defense Ministry so they can work more professionally, search for traitors, and uncover embezzlement,” he said.

Ongoing Protests

But first, Ukraine’s parliament must approve Khmara’s appointment, and its next session is not scheduled until mid-August. In the meantime, protests against Fedorov’s ouster are continuing.

Some have compared them to the demonstrations last year against moves to strip anti-corruption agencies of their independence. As those protests grew, and with pressure from the European Union, Zelenskyy reversed course.

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“These challenges are different, but both of them are about the trust in the leadership and the bad communication,” Hanna Shelest, director for Security Studies at the Kyiv-based think-tank Ukrainian Prism, told RFE/RL.

“There was no proper communication from the office of the president,” Shelest said. “People are coming [to protests] not because of [Fedorov’s] personality, but because of the doubt that other people within the military really would like to have reforms and why the president is not talking with people, why he's making these decisions.”

Mylovanov said much will now depend on what happens with the demonstrations.

“I attended them, and today is the second day of the protests. They don't appear to be escalating, and they don't appear yet to be widespread,” he said.

But, he added, the controversy may have some time to run and the crowds on the street still have the potential to have an impact.

“They're meaningful. People who dismiss them make a mistake," he said. "They can explode and escalate. But for now, they don't appear to be on a par with what was seen last year.”