The Kiev Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, today approved the appointment of Andrii Sybiha as the new Foreign Minister of Ukraine, replacing resigned Dmytro Kuleba, as part of the broader government reshuffle decided by President Volodymyr Zelensky since the Russian invasion of the country.
The announcement, given to the press by MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, according to which 258 MPs voted in favor of appointing Andrii Sybiha as the new head of Ukrainian diplomacy, did not surprise observers. The 49-year-old is in fact a long-time diplomat and a well-known face in Kiev and especially to President Zelensky and his collaborators, as emerges from his curriculum published on his ministry’s website.
Who is Andrii Sybiha and what does he want to do?
Born in 1975 in Zboriv, Ternopil region, western Ukraine, he began his diplomatic career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kiev back in 1997 as an attaché in the Department of International Legal Affairs.
Over a quarter of a century, he climbed the entire hierarchy of the ministry, serving as secretary (from 1998 to 2002) and then as diplomatic advisor (from 2008 to 2012) of the Ukrainian embassy in Poland and then as Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey from 2016 to 2021, crucial years in which Kiev and Ankara concluded important deals for the purchase and production of weapons and above all of the infamous Bayraktar TB2 armed drones.
Considered a loyalist to the presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, in June of that year he was appointed deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine, a role that led him to work closely with Zelensky (and with Yermak, director of the same office since February 2020) and which he would hold until his appointment, in April of this year, as first deputy foreign minister.
Married with three children, a native Ukrainian speaker, he also speaks English and Polish. For years he has overseen Kiev’s foreign policy and strategic partnerships. But among Ukrainians, Sybiha is remembered for having signed the order to suspend consular services to Ukrainians abroad of military age, which sparked controversy. As Deputy Foreign Minister, however, he was also involved in negotiations to bring the major powers closer to Kiev. In June, for example encounter in Beijing both his Chinese counterpart Sun Weidong and the Special Representative of the People’s Republic for Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui.
Moreover, his diplomatic skills clearly emerged in April last year, on the eve of the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive. Then, when Zelensky had already ruled out any possible negotiations with Moscow on Crimea, in an interview with Financial Times Sybiha revealed that Kiev would be open to dialogue if its armed forces reached the peninsula. “If we manage to achieve our strategic goals on the battlefield and when we are on the administrative border with Crimea, we will be ready to open (a) diplomatic page to discuss the issue,” these to the British economic daily. A glimmer of hope was soon closed by Zelensky’s representative for Crimea, Tamila Tasheva, but it was Sybiha who opened it.
However, it is likely that the main mission of the new head of Ukrainian diplomacy will be quite different. According to sources cited by the news agency AfpZelensky would have replaced his predecessor Kuleba due to the minister’s inability to obtain new weapons and ammunition from the US and Europe. This will probably be the new mandate of Sibiha.
