19JUL

SBU officer Khmara takes defence duties

2 min read

13:35UTC

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.

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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.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Zelenskyy's February 2024 replacement of Zaluzhny with Syrskyi ran on the same logic now repeated one level down: an officer with a concrete operational record chosen over an administrator to close a friction point with the front line.

Counter-parallel: Klymenko's own refusal of the post a day earlier is the closer cautionary case; Khmara still needs a Verkhovna Rada confirmation vote that no rushed nomination in this cycle has yet secured, unlike Syrskyi's clean 2024 handover.

Consensus view: Khmara takes over a ministry whose named unfixed problem is recruitment and brigade quality, and his deep-strike record suits a war being fought increasingly at range rather than through mass infantry manoeuvre; Zelenskyy's own stated rationale, technological and long-range strike experience, points the same way.

Counter-view: Alpha Special Operations Centre training builds long-range strike and hostage-rescue skills, not the recruitment-office and brigade-staffing work the ministry has been failing at; an officer credentialled in one does not thereby carry a demonstrated record in the other.

Key tension: The appointment is provisional, pending a Verkhovna Rada confirmation vote, so the choice may not survive contact with Parliament regardless of which reading of Khmara's fit turns out to be correct.

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

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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

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This Event

SBU officer Khmara takes defence duties

A long-range strike officer now runs a ministry whose unresolved file is mobilisation.

Different Perspectives

The United Kingdom

Starmer pledged £300 million in Kyiv on 16 July toward Ukraine's Gripen E squadron, adding to the PURL expansion Trump and Rutte had announced two days earlier. London is paying into a scheme built around a shortfall NATO's own published $4bn-plus pledge does not close against Zelenskyy's roughly $15bn stated need.

Brussels

The EU's 21st sanctions package missed its Coreper vote on 15 July over Greek LNG re-export rights and an Austrian bank compensation demand, the same week Hungary stalled accession clusters on procedure rather than veto. Both processes run on unanimity, so a single national interest, not Russia policy, sets the pace either can move at.

Hungary's Tisza government

Budapest refused to open EU accession Clusters 2 and 3 for Ukraine at COELA on 17 July, offering Moldova a standalone opening instead, and the question returns on 22 July. Having ended Orbán's blanket loan veto in May, it now blocks the narrower rule-of-law chapters where its own electorate is least comfortable.

Washington

Trump and Rutte expanded PURL on 14 July, letting allies fund the American interceptors and jets Washington will license but no longer gift outright. The same week, Lockheed Martin told allies it cannot guarantee PAC-3 MSE delivery timelines even after tripling output, so Washington now shapes Ukraine's air defence through a supply queue rather than a donation decision.

Moscow

Novak ordered a study into cutting the diesel exchange quota to 10% within a week of his export ban, while June delivered Russia's first budget surplus of 2026 and National Wealth Fund liquidity above its own May forecast. Its own investors disagree: the Moscow Exchange has fallen for its longest losing streak since 1997.

Ukraine's government and its street protesters

Zelenskyy sacked Fedorov on 15 July, installed an acting SBU officer in his place, and did not move against three days of protest that followed across eight cities. He is betting that visible tolerance for dissent, timed to EU accession hearings on rule of law, outweighs whatever command dispute forced the reshuffle.