Ukraine’s Zelenskyy gives Andrii Sybiha nod as country’s new foreign minister

ISTANBUL

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday nominated Andrii Sybiha as the country’s new foreign minister, the biggest move yet in the largest government reshuffle since the Russia-Ukraine war began some 30 months ago. 

A bill on Sybiha’s appointment as top diplomat was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, according to its website.

Sybiha’s nomination follows parliament approving the resignation of Dmytro Kuleba, who held the post of foreign minister since 2020, with 240 votes, Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on Telegram.

Zheleznyak later said that lawmakers also voted to support the removal of Iryna Vereshchuk, the minister of reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, and Vitaliy Koval, the head of Ukraine’s State Property Fund.

A previous vote on Vereshchuk and Koval’s resignations on Wednesday did not pass as an absolute majority of 226 votes could not be reached.

On Tuesday, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the parliament speaker, said he had received resignation letters from multiple Ukrainian Cabinet ministers for reasons that have yet to be determined, but with the winds reportedly blowing for major changes in government.

A day later, Stefanchuk also declared that he got Kuleba’s resignation letter.

Sybiha, his successor, served as first deputy foreign minister since vacating the post of deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, which he held between 2021 and 2024.

Before that, Sybiha served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Türkiye in 2016-2021, a key post even before the start of the current war in February 2022.

Türkiye has long worked to make peace between Russia and Ukraine, especially given its strong ties with both countries, and has also served as a vocal advocate of the nation’s ethnic Turkic Tatars, who have suffered greatly since 2014, when Russia illegally took Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and the port city of Sevastopol.

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