Ukraine, here is Sybiha: the new Foreign Minister has only one mission

Forty-nine years old, married with three children, Andrii Sybiha he was just confirmed as Foreign Minister by the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. He takes over from Dmytro Kulebawho resigned yesterday as part of a cabinet reshuffle called for by President Volodymyr Zelensky: it is the largest renewal in the executive since the outbreak of the war in 2022, which involved several ministries. According to Ukrainian media, in the last few hours Zelensky in closed-door meetings attributed the ‘dismissal’ of Kuleba in particular to the difficulties encountered by Kiev in the acquisition of weapons and ammunition in the recent period. This, presumably, will be the main mission of the new minister.

Sybiha, according to the official Ukrainian government page, was born in Zboriv, ​​a small town in the Ternopil Oblast, in the west of the country. A graduate of the University of Lviv, fluent in English and Polish, the new Foreign Minister has spent his entire diplomatic career. From 1998 to 2002 he was second and then first secretary at the embassy in Poland. He then worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Directorate General for European Integration and the Directorate for International Legal Affairs.

From 2008 to 2012 he was a minister plenipotentiary at the embassy in Poland, and for the next four years he was the head of the General Directorate for Consular Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2016 Sybiha was appointed Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey. In 2021 he became Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and finally in 2024 he was appointed First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.