KYIV, July 16 — Rustem Umerov, the current Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, has a biography that reads less like a standard political resume and more like a blueprint for how post-Soviet elites reposition themselves. The mechanics here are worth unpacking: a Crimean Tatar born in exile, an American-exchange student, a founder of an investment firm, and now a central figure in Ukraine’s war-time security apparatus. On closer reading, the thread connecting these roles is less about ideology and more about institutional access and capital allocation.
Umerov took the National Security post on 18 July 2025, after serving as Defence Minister from September 2023. Before that, the Verkhovna Rada appointed him head of the State Property Fund in September 2022.
The catch is that each promotion came during a period of acute crisis—the full-scale Russian invasion that began in February 2022. Umerov joined Ukraine’s negotiation team with Russia that same month, putting him at the table during the most high-stakes talks since independence. Born on 19 April 1982 in Bulungʻur, Samarkand, in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Umerov’s family were Crimean Tatars deported on 18 May 1944 to the Uzbek SSR.
They returned to Crimea in 1989. That displacement history is not abstract for Umerov: he co-authored almost 100 bills, drafted a statement on the illegitimacy of Russia’s vote on amendments to the annexation of Crimea, and introduced a bill to abolish the Crimean free economic zone.
He also helped spearhead the construction of 1,000 apartments for internally-displaced Crimean Tatars with Turkish support, agreed upon. Follow the money. In 2013, Umerov and his brother Aslan Ömer Qırımlı founded the investment company ASTEM and its ASTEM Foundation, which manages investments in telecommunications, IT, and infrastructure.
The foundation funded Stanford University’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders program. Umerov holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in finance from the National Academy of Management. He also participated in the Future Leaders Exchange program funded by the U.S. Department of State, attending an American school for one academic year.
Since 2019, Umerov has been a People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the Holos party. He is also the President’s Advisory Council Commissioner for Ukraine’s Interaction with Arab and Muslim States.
On 3 September 2023, Zelenskyy nominated him to replace Oleksii Reznikov as defence minister; the Verkhovna Rada confirmed him on 6 September 2023. Umerov is a member of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The question now is how Umerov’s dual background—as both a businessman who built a telecom and IT investment portfolio and a political figure who has helped shape Ukraine’s wartime negotiations—will inform his current role overseeing national security.
The portfolio he manages includes not just military coordination but also the economic dimensions of a war economy. Given his track record at ASTEM and the State Property Fund, the expectation is that the mechanics of resource allocation will receive as much attention as battlefield strategy.
