UPDATES WITH PARLIAMENTARY VOTE; ADDS MORE DETAILS; REVISES HEADLINE, DECK, LEDE; EDITS THROUGHOUT
By Burc Eruygur
ISTANBUL (AA) - Ukraine's parliament on Thursday voted to approve the nomination of Andrii Sybiha as the country's new foreign minister, the first move in the largest government reshuffle since the Russia-Ukraine war began some 30 months ago.
Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on Telegram that 258 parliamentarians voted to support Sybiha's nomination for the position.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy submitted a draft bill to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, to appoint Sybiha, soon after the parliament voted to approve the resignation of Dmytro Kuleba, who had held the post since 2020.
Sybiha, his successor, served as the 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 annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and the port city of Sevastopol.
- Government reshuffle
On the same day, Zheleznyak 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.