Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
Iran Conflict 2026
23AUG

SBU officer Khmara takes defence duties

2 min read
19:02UTC

Zelenskyy assigned Yevhen Khmara, acting head of the SBU, to perform the Defence Minister's duties on 16 July, after Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko turned the job down.

← Back to A $22.9bn missile order, and a hunger rowJump to analysis ↓
ConflictDeveloping
Key takeaway

Khmara's strike record answers none of the recruitment questions that cost his predecessor the job.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy assigned Yevhen Khmara to perform the Defence Minister's duties on 16 July, pending a confirmation vote in the Verkhovna Rada 1. Khmara is the acting head of the SBU, Ukraine's domestic security and intelligence service, and previously commanded its Alpha Special Operations Centre. Zelenskyy cited his record in long-range strike operations.

The succession went wrong in public before it landed there. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko was floated for the post between 13 and 15 July, declined it, and took the National Security and Defence Council secretary role instead. Ukraine therefore spent a day with its defence portfolio openly unfilled, and now has an acting minister whose confirmation is a parliamentary question rather than a settled one.

What Khmara brings is a special-operations record, and what he inherits is an administrative machine. The ministry's hardest open file is mobilisation: recruitment shortfalls, brigade formation, and the churn of infantry that neither deep strikes nor intelligence work touches. Russian officials were themselves discussing a fresh mobilisation wave for October , which sets a rough deadline on how long Kyiv has to fix its own intake before the arithmetic on the other side changes. Alpha runs small teams under short chains of command, compartmented from one another by design. Conscription policy runs the opposite way, through recruitment centres, courts and local administrations, and it is exactly the part of the job Fedorov was dismissed for not solving.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Ukraine needed someone to run the Defence Ministry after Fedorov's abrupt exit, and the first choice turned it down. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko was floated for the job but declined it, taking a different senior security post instead. Zelenskyy then assigned Yevhen Khmara, the acting head of Ukraine's domestic security service (the SBU) and a former commander of its Alpha special-operations unit, to run the ministry's day-to-day duties while parliament decides whether to confirm him properly. The choice is notable because Khmara is a security and special-operations officer, not a career politician or administrator. Zelenskyy cited his experience in long-range strike operations as the reason for picking him.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Khmara inherits a ministry whose unresolved file is mobilisation, the same file Russian planners were separately discussing when they weighed their own October mobilisation wave; the appointment does not resolve that file, it hands it to an officer whose background is special operations rather than personnel administration.

The Verkhovna Rada's confirmation requirement creates a structural gap Zelenskyy cannot bridge by decree alone: he can install Khmara in an acting capacity immediately, but cannot guarantee lawmakers will confirm a security-service pick who has no legislative track record and comes from Alpha's classified operational culture.

Sources:Forbes Ukraine·Forbes Ukraine
Mentions:Volodymyr Zelenskyy →Verkhovna Rada →Kyiv →Ukraine →Yevhen Khmara →Ihor Klymenko →
First Reported In

Update #24 · Fedorov sacked as the front stands still

Forbes Ukraine· 19 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Russia eyes a quiet October call-up
Khmara, a deep-strike officer, takes over a ministry whose unresolved file is mobilisation, the same file Russian planners were working against when they discussed their own October mobilisation wave.
Occurred 24 Jun 2026
Read story →
This Event
SBU officer Khmara takes defence duties
A long-range strike officer now runs a ministry whose unresolved file is mobilisation.
Led to
Legal fight over acting defence chief
Khmara's 16 July assignment as acting minister was formalised by cabinet order on 20 July.
Occurred 20 Jul 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Hizballah
Hizballah
Has not commented on the US Treasury's 20 August designation of ten people, including named couriers, over a cash network Treasury says moved money to it from the IRGC-Qods Force. ACLED recorded a sharp rise in attacks around it the same day.
Kuwait
Kuwait
Kuwait's Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Khaled al-Shriaan, co-chaired the 16th US-Kuwait Joint Military Commission at the Pentagon on 21 August. Kuwait has not published what was agreed; only a summary of the meeting's existence and attendees is sourced.
Qatar
Qatar
Has not commented publicly on the $4.5bn KC-46A tanker Foreign Military Sale notification the State Department approved on 20 August. The notification opens a sale process; Doha has not confirmed whether it will proceed to a signed transfer.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Told a Baghdad business meeting on 20 August that Iran will not endure a hungry population regardless of its military strength, against 87.9% point-to-point inflation and 128.1% food inflation for Tir. His fellow Majlis Economic Committee member Samsami separately warned a petrol price rise would ignite unrest.
US Navy
US Navy
Signed a $22.9bn, seven-year contract with Raytheon on 17 August to raise Tomahawk output from about 60 a year to more than 1,000. The Acting Navy Secretary, quoted via an X post, framed it as the "Arsenal of Freedom" initiative; it replaces the 850 missiles fired by 1 April in about ten months at the new rate.
UK Maritime Trade Operations
UK Maritime Trade Operations
UKMTO logged six armed men boarding a tanker 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla on 20 August and redirecting it toward Somalia. A vessel steered toward the Somali coast reads as an attempted seizure, a distinct hazard from the stand-off strikes the same lane has seen before.