The Crimean Supreme Council at a meeting on Wednesday decided to appoint Mykola Poliushkin as the new Crimean minister of agricultural policy and food.

An Interfax-Ukraine reporter said that earlier the Crimean deputies dismissed Valeriy Kravets as Crimean minister of agricultural policy and food, in connection with his statement of resignation and transfer to the department of affairs at the Crimean Council of Ministers.

Poliushkin, born in 1958, served as Crimean first deputy agriculture minister from January 2004 to July 2005, and then worked as deputy agriculture minister for more than seven years. In October 2012, he again assumed the post of first deputy minister of agricultural policy and food.