Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov signed a decree appointing Arsen Zhumadilov as the head of the Army Resource Support Agency on 28 August, an LB.ua correspondent reports.
"He (Zhumadilov - Ed.) has experience. He is trusted. He has the expertise. Therefore, I am convinced that we will move in this direction quite effectively," Reznikov said at a press conference.
He predicts that the Army Resource Support Agency will start operating this autumn.
Arsen Zhumadilov is a Crimean Tatar, born in Simferopol. He is a lecturer at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Zhumadilov is the first and so far the only head of the state enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine selected in the competition. In 2022, he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and worked on procurement in the military medical service. Since April 2023, he has been heading the defence procurement reform team at the Office for Support of Change.
In an interview with LB.ua, commenting on the creation of a defence procurement agency, Zhumadilov said that it would depend on whether "we really have support from the Defence Ministry and the government". He also suggested that there might be some resistance from the ministry's structural units.