While the latest shakeup in Kiev’s government—in which three ministers were included in the Sept. 4 firings—were explained by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s as Ukraine needing “need new energy and these new steps are connected to strengthening our state in different directions.… Autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine. And our state institutions must be set up in such a way that Ukraine will achieve all the results we need—for all of us.”
Ukraine’s newest Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha was senior envoy to Türkiye over 2016-2021, and served two stints at Kyiv’s embassy in Poland. Ukrainska Pravda reports that he joined the presidential office in 2021, working under influential administration head Andriy Yermak. He was appointed as first deputy foreign minister earlier this year. Ukrainian lawmaker Bohan Yaremenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada’s foreign affairs committee and from Zelenskyy’s “Party of the People,” told ABC News that Sybiha had “spent two years next to the President, so he knows more than anyone else about the most recent negotiations with all important partners.”