Ukraine appoints Andrij Sybiha as new foreign minister
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine approved Andrij Sybiha as Minister of Foreign Affairs on Thursday. The current deputy minister will replace Dmytro Kuleba, who has held the position since 2020 and throughout Russia's second attack.
President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed 49-year-old Sybiha's candidacy, which was approved by 258 deputies, as opposition deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko reported.
Sybiha was born in 1975 in Zboriv, in the Ternopil region in the western part of the country. He graduated from Lviv University and is a lawyer by education. He began his career in the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the late 1990s.
Experienced diplomat
He served as a diplomat in Poland from 1998 to 2002 and from 2008 to 2012. From 2016 to 2021, he served as Ukraine's ambassador to Turkey.
He later assumed the position of deputy head of the President of Ukraine's office and held it until April 2024, when he became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the president’s office, where he replaced Andriy Yermak, he was responsible for foreign policy and the development of strategic partnerships.
The new head of Ukrainian diplomacy is married and has three children.
Sybiha took the ministerial position as part of the largest reshuffle in the Ukrainian government since Russia's full-scale invasion began. Sources close to the Ukrainian president’s office told Politico that Sybiha is a "strong, classic diplomat, very experienced, and has been working with [international] partners since the beginning of the invasion."
