Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s main privatisation agency, to serve as the country’s wartime defence minister following Oleksii Reznikov’s dismissal.

Here is what you need to know about Umerov:

A Crimean Tatar born in exile

Umerov, 41, is a Crimean Tatar, a Turkic group of Sunni Muslims whose ancestral home is the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

In 1944, 180,000 Crimean Tatars, including Umerov’s family, were deported from Crimea to Uzbekistan on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. He was born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

In 1991, Rustam and his family returned to Crimea during the Crimean Tatar repatriation of the late 1980s and early 90s.