Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) today overwhelmingly confirmed Yehven Khmara as the new defense minister of the country, despite ongoing demonstrations by supporters of his ousted predecessor Mykhailo Fedorov and an attempted political power-play by Fedorov himself. Zelensky fired Fedorov in July, but was unable to win the Rada’s approval for his first replacement selection amid demonstrations at that time. He then installed Khmara, who had headed the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) since January of this year, as interim defense minister until the parliament returned from a summer recess yesterday.

Khmara has a background in special forces and “black ops.” He worked for a long time in the SBU’s Special Operations Center “A”, which conducts special ops and is considered one of the most secretive and well-trained units of the Ukrainian intelligence service. In 2014 Khmara was involved in the first operations to suppress the revolt in Donbass (eastern Ukraine) against the Western-engineered Euromaidan coup in Kiev. His unit was also responsible for drone warfare and long-range strikes into Russia. This group was also linked to the Ukrainian operation “Spider Web,” in which drone attacks on Russian strategic bombers at their home airfields were launched from inside Russia.

Khmara, who held the rank of major general, formally resigned from military service today to comply with Ukrainian law’s requirement that the minister of defense be a civilian. Already from the get-go, Khmara has made it clear that he will pursue the war against Russia with utter ruthlessness. Addressing the Verkhovna Rada, he announced his plans to “force” Russia to make peace, saying this could only be accomplished “by the strength of our army, our technological and asymmetrical solutions.”