Yevhenii Khmara, who headed the Security Service of Ukraine's Special Operations Centre and later led the service itself, is Ukraine's new Defence Minister.

The American outlet The National Interest has published a profile of Yevhenii Khmara, confirmed as Minister of Defence of Ukraine by the Verkhovna Rada in August. The full article is available here.

Its central argument is that Khmara arrives at the ministry not as a career administrator but as a special operations commander — and that this may be less of a mismatch than it appears. The author’s case rests on how he thinks about resources: in ratios, weighing what a strike costs against the damage it does. A defence ministry, she notes, is fundamentally a machine for allocating scarce things — money, equipment, people, risk — and that is what Khmara has spent recent years doing.

Before taking office he left military service with the rank of major general, in line with the legal requirement that the ministry be headed by a civilian. His appointment was confirmed by a constitutional majority.

Khmara previously commanded Alpha, the Security Service of Ukraine’s elite special operations unit, and later headed the service itself. In June 2025 his units took part in Operation Spiderweb, the multi-stage operation in which SBU drone operators struck Russian strategic aircraft at airbases thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, drones worth roughly USD 1 million inflicted more than USD 5 billion in damage on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet — losses Moscow cannot quickly replace.

During his seven months leading the Security Service, Ukraine’s long-running campaign against Russian oil refining expanded in scale and tempo. The General Staff estimates that almost 43% of Russia’s refining capacity has now been put out of action. Russia has recorded double-digit falls in refined product output this year and has been forced to import fuel and restrict petrol sales.

Khmara has set out the principle behind this: strikes should cost around 2% of the economic damage they inflict, and should target the nodes of a system — refineries, transport hubs, export routes — rather than isolated facilities. He frames the distinction in moral terms as well as operational ones: Russia strikes what terrorises civilians, while Ukraine strikes what pays for the war.

The profile also examines his working relationship with Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, appointed Commander-in-Chief in the same reshuffle. Both come from a similar operational culture — offensive-minded and wary of Soviet-style centralisation — and, unlike their predecessors, begin without mutual grievances. The two are already planning the next phase of carrying the war onto Russian territory.

On technology, Khmara argues that the state’s role is not to invent but to create conditions in which people can field and refine equipment on a battlefield that changes every few months. On mobilisation, he avoids slogans: people volunteer when they believe they can make a difference and that they will survive. Improve the conditions of service, and the willingness follows.

His assessment of the wider picture is unsentimental — a small Soviet army cannot defeat a large one, so Ukraine has to build its own way of fighting. Ukraine has known tragedy throughout its history, he says; what sets this generation apart is that it has “a real chance to defeat the enemy”.