Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shook up his government on September 5 and replaced Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba with Andriy Sybiha, along with almost a dozen of other ministers and senior officials to “reinvigorate” his administration, the president said the next day.

Kuleba had held the post of Foreign Minister since March 2020 and worked tirelessly to rally support for Ukraine’s existential war with Russia. However, as bne IntelliNews has reported, Kyiv has run up against a brick wall in recent months as Ukraine fatigue sets in and its Western allies have dragged their heels on providing both military and financial help. In particular, a G7 $50bn loan to Ukraine, approved on June 13 at a G7 summit in Italy, is caught up in wrangling amongst the partners over who is going to contribute how much. Germany recently announced it will scale down the amount it contributes in the coming years, leaving a $12bn hole in the 2024 budget that will rise to $15bn in 2025, according to recent statements by the Ministry of Finance (MinFin).

The second issue is Bankova’s (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) increasing frustration with the US, which continues to block permission for Ukraine to use the powerful Nato-supplied missiles to hit targets deeper inside Russia that are badly needed to be struck following the Kursk incursion that began on August 4. According to recent reports, the defence of the front line in the Donbas regions is beginning to crumble, leading some to ask whether the invasion of Russia was a strategic blunder.

Sybiha takes over a big and difficult portfolio. A seasoned diplomat and former First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, he was confirmed in his new job by the Rada with 258 votes, comfortably passing the required 226 threshold.

Sybiha’s appointment comes as part of a broader reshuffle within the Ukrainian government, aimed at injecting “new energy” into its leadership. Zelenskiy, who had announced his intent to overhaul the administration the day prior, remarked that the changes were essential to bolster the country’s capabilities in “international politics and diplomacy.” He added: “We need new energy today.”

A career diplomat

Sybiha was born in the western Ukrainian town of Zboriv in 1975, and rose steadily through the ranks of Ukraine’s foreign service, reports Vedomosti. A graduate of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv with degrees in international relations and law, he began his career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as an attaché in the legal department.

Sybiha’s foreign service includes two stints at the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland, first in the late 1990s and later from 2008 to 2012, where he served as an adviser-envoy. He is fluent in Polish and English, and maintains good relations with the Polish-Ukrainian community, and as he is part-Polish himself, he is seen as a natural interlocutor in relations with Kyiv’s western neighbour.

Sybiha’s diplomatic career also included stints as the head of Ukraine’s consular service and as ambassador to Turkey between 2016 and 2021 – another key Ukrainian ally – where he helped establish a visa-free regime. His time in Ankara saw him forge strong ties with the Turkish authorities, and he has been vocal about Ukraine’s strategic relationship with Turkey, reports Vedomosti. In an interview, he praised Turkey as “the only state in the world that agreed to supply attack drones to Ukraine during a very difficult period,” referencing the crucial Bayraktar TB2 drones supplied to Ukraine at the start of the war.

Sybiha has also taken a firm stance on Russia, regularly criticising Moscow’s role in post-Soviet conflicts even before the war started. In a 2020 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek Turkiye, he accused Russia of conducting a “hybrid information war” against Ukraine and manipulating history to claim victory over Nazism. He has also been a sharp critic of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that was destroyed in September 2023, which he described in 2021 as “Russia’s geopolitical weapon” and a threat to both European security and energy stability.

A key adviser to Zelenskiy

In May 2021, Sybiha moved from the MFA to the Office of the President, where he was appointed Deputy Head, focusing on foreign policy and strategic partnerships. His tenure coincided with the height of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, during which Sybiha was a key figure in organising international support for President Zelenskiy and coordinating diplomatic efforts abroad. He played a significant role in Zelenskiy’s global engagements, including helping to craft the president’s speeches during his visits to foreign capitals.

Sybiha grabbed the limelight in April 2023 when he announced Ukraine’s planned counter-offensive against Russia in an interview with the Financial Times. He notably stated that Ukraine would be prepared to “open a diplomatic page” to discuss the Crimea once it had reached the peninsula’s administrative borders but did not rule out a military option. His remarks were part of Ukraine’s broader strategy to regain lost territory, which remains central to its military and diplomatic calculus as part of Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan that was introduced at the G20 summit in November 2022.

Challenges ahead

As Sybiha steps into the role of foreign minister, he inherits a difficult portfolio. His predecessor, Kuleba, was instrumental in galvanising international support for Ukraine during the war, and Sybiha will now be tasked with building on that momentum as the military situation worsens.

One of his immediate responsibilities will be to navigate the complex diplomatic landscape surrounding Ukraine’s peace efforts. Zelenskiy has called for a second peace summit in November to which China and Russia will be invited following the failure of the Swiss peace summit held on June 16-17 that was supposed to renew Ukraine’s international support and further isolate Russia. However, only 76 countries signed off on the final watered down communiqué – half the number that voted to condemn Russia in the UN voting at the start of the war, highlighting the inroads Russia has made in undermining Ukraine’s support amongst the Global South.

In his previous role, Sybiha helped organise Ukraine’s Swiss peace summit, travelling to China in June 2024 to meet senior officials, including Sun Weidong and Li Hui, in an attempt to secure Beijing’s participation, which failed. Beijing said that as long as Russia didn’t attend the event China saw no point in attending. Nevertheless, Sybiha’s experience in high-stakes diplomacy will be critical as Ukraine continues to seek international backing for its territorial integrity and post-war reconstruction.

Relations with Poland, a strong backer of Ukraine’s effort to restore its territorial integrity, have been marred by a polemical trade row, after cheap Ukrainian grain wrecked the Polish grain market in April 2023, causing Warsaw to unilaterally ban the transit of grain to the EU – one of Ukraine’s biggest foreign exchange earners. That ban remains in place and other disputes over Ukrainian truckers transiting the country have appeared in the meantime.

Sybiha took a combative stance towards Poland over its grain exports ban, where he accused Warsaw of pushing Ukraine towards “euthanasia” by prolonging an embargo on Ukrainian agricultural products.

Poland will continue military assistance to Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” in line with a comprehensive bilateral security deal Zelenskiy announced following a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in July. However, Tusk qualified the relationship saying that Poland would block Ukraine’s membership of the EU unless it “owned up to past atrocities.” The two countries have a long and troubled history, especially during WWII when Ukrainian nationalists partnered with the Nazis, which led to a massacre of 60,000 ethnic Poles living in western Ukraine that had been part of Poland in the past, amongst other things. Warsaw has long said that Ukraine should formally apologise for what it calls a genocide.

As Ukraine’s new top diplomat, Sybiha will also likely focus on expanding Kyiv’s ties beyond its traditional partners. Kuleba has recently toured SE Asia and Africa in an effort to drum up more support for his country in the Global South, particularly in the wake of the recent Swiss peace summit. The stakes are high as Ukraine continues to face Russia’s aggression while striving for international recognition of its sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbas regions.