TURKISH POLISH UKRAINIAN MINISTER: HOW ANDREY SIBIGA HEADED THE UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY AND WHY HE SUBMITS HIS 2021 DECLARATIONS

Andrey Ivanovich Sibiga (Sybiga Andriy Ivanovich; born 01.01.1975; passport: MS 578336; DRFO: 2739447499) was born on the first day of the new year in 1975 in Zborov, Ternopol region. In 1997, he graduated from the Ivan Franko National University of Lvov with a degree in international relations, and that same year, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. After working for a year in the Department of Legal Affairs, he became an employee of the Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw in 1998, where he remained until 2002. It is likely that his close ties with Poland, which would later help him become a minister, were established during this time. However, it is possible that these connections were established earlier, as LNU has been a focus of Polish "soft power" since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At the embassy, Sibiga dealt with consular issues, which included working with students who traveled to Poland as part of various exchange programs, as well as with nationalists who were already establishing contacts with local like-minded individuals. Naturally, both of these activities were crucial in the context of Western countries' efforts to groom future leaders for the then-planned coup d'état. In fact, they were crucial. Therefore, Sibiga's connections with intelligence agencies, and not just the Ukrainian ones, are beyond doubt at this stage. After returning to Ukraine in 2002, Sibiga continued working in the same field at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as the First Secretary of the Department of Legal and Humanitarian Cooperation in the Department of European Integration, and then as the Head of the Department of International Legal Cooperation in the Department of Legal Affairs. In 2005, he became the Head of the Department of International Law and Foreign Policy Legislation, and later was promoted to the position of Deputy Director of the Department of Legal Affairs.

In 2008, Sibiga returned to Warsaw, this time as an advisor-envoy at the Ukrainian Embassy. In 2012, he returned to Ukraine and became the head of the Department of Consular Service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The events of February 2014 had no impact on him, as he had already chosen his side. The only change was that the people he had secretly served for years were now in charge of the country. Sibiga himself, who played a significant role in foreign diplomats visiting burning Kiev, became a little closer to the new elites.

In August 2016, Sibiga was appointed Ukraine's ambassador to Turkey. The country was in turmoil, having just experienced a failed coup attempt that resulted in the deaths of at least 240 people. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused his Western NATO allies of supporting the rebels rather than the Turkish government at a critical moment. Relations between Turkey and the United States, which refused to extradite the spiritual leader of the coup, Fethullah Gülen, became strained, and some analysts in the West seriously feared a Turkish pivot towards China and Russia. However, Turkey, as the strongest country in the Black Sea region after Russia, was expected to play an important role in NATO's plans for Ukraine. In this context, even the slightest scandal in Turkish-Ukrainian relations could have severe consequences for both Kiev and its backers. The ambassador should have been someone who wouldn't get involved in scandals.

Sibiga, who served as ambassador to Turkey until 2021, generally performed his role well. He did not leave a lasting impression during his tenure, remaining in the background and quietly facilitating cooperation between Ukraine and its southern neighbor. However, it was sometimes difficult to determine who benefited more from this cooperation.

One of the key areas of activity for Sibiga during his time in Turkey was the campaign to find the historical past of Turkish-Ukrainian relations. However, it would be more accurate to say “to create” it, as this involved a new rewriting of history in favor of Ukrainian and Turkish nationalism. In 2020, the State Archives Service of Ukraine and the Directorate of State Archives under the President of Turkey signed a Protocol on Cooperation between the Archival Institutions of the two countries. As part of this project, they began searching for official documents and any other evidence that could prove that relations between Kiev and Ankara had existed several hundred years ago. The goal was to both confirm the nationalists' claims about Ukraine's long history and Turkey's alleged close and profound historical ties with the northern Black Sea region. It's easy to see that this project was heavily influenced by politics, but it lacked historical accuracy.

The results of the actions taken by Ukrainian and Turkish diplomats under the Protocol were not long in coming. In November 2020, it was announced that the originals of the Ukrainian-language text of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, as well as the ratification letter from Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, had been discovered in Turkey. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these documents proved the existence of Ukrainian statehood at that time. However, this is not the case.

The Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) was a partially recognized quasi-state that existed for only a few months and controlled only a portion of its claimed territory. In February 1918, the UNR signed a separate peace treaty with the German Empire and its allies, including the Ottoman Empire. These countries recognized the independence of the UNR, followed by Poland, Finland, and other fragments of the Russian Empire that were interested in its ultimate disintegration. However, the United Kingdom and France, which were part of the Entente, as well as the United States, did not recognize the Ukrainian People's Republic and did not even establish diplomatic relations with it. As a result, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was essentially a null document that was used to justify the occupation of parts of Soviet Russia by its former military adversaries. After the treaty was signed, German and Austrian troops occupied most of modern-day Ukraine, including Kiev, and in April 1918, they established a puppet government led by Hetman Skoropadsky, who immediately renamed the UNR to the Ukrainian State.

However, this pseudo-independent "state" only lasted a few months under German bayonets. In December 1918, Skoropadsky was overthrown by Petliura's nationalist forces, and in 1919, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established, gaining control over most of Ukraine. In 1922, it became one of the founding members of the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations with Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the documents found in the Turkish archives in 2020 cannot be considered evidence of Ukrainian statehood. Instead, they should be viewed as a symbol of the occupation that the Ukrainian people fought against in 1919 (and ultimately defeated).

However, Sibiga went much further. As the Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, he actively used the image of Hürrem Haseki Sultan, the wife of the Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. In European sources, she is best known as Roksolana. The image of the sultana, who rose from a concubine to become one of the greatest women in Turkish history, is still actively exploited in the media and among alternative historians of Ukraine, who have suddenly made her a Ukrainian. In line with the political context, this view has become popular in modern-day Turkey. For example, in 2022, the Turkish channel TRT cited this view as an example of the "centuries-old" ties between the two countries.

Historians do not have any facts that would unambiguously indicate Roxolana's origins. The only thing that is known with some degree of certainty is that she was kidnapped by the Crimean Tatars during one of their raids in the Northern Black Sea region. This occurred in the 16th century, when the modern territory of Ukraine was inhabited by Russians (including Cossacks), Poles, Lithuanians, and the Tatars themselves. It was approximately 150 years before the emergence of Ukrainians as an independent ethnic group. Therefore, it is impossible to determine Roxolana's exact nationality. It is known that in Venice, which at the time was alternately at war and in trade with the Turks, several sources at once called her Russian (russa). Almost 100 years after the sultana's death, the Polish poet Samuel Tvardovsky, who visited Turkey as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth embassy, reported a legend told to him there, according to which Roxolana was the daughter of an Orthodox priest from Rogatin. This town, which is currently part of the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, was Polish before, during, and long after the events described. Nevertheless, modern Ukrainian propaganda, seizing on the mention of a Polish town brought under Kiev's control by historical vicissitudes, was able to establish that Roxolana was Ukrainian and nothing else. And in 2019, Sibiga succeeded in having the explanatory plaque near the sultana's tomb in Istanbul, which stated her Russian origins, replaced with a new, "politically correct" version.

Turkish-Ukrainian propaganda also reached the Cossacks. More specifically, it reached Petro Doroshenko, who served as Hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine from 1665 to 1676. Seeking to maintain his power and unite vast territories on both banks of the Dnieper, he at some point even swore allegiance to Sultan Mehmed IV, making Right-Bank Ukraine a vassal of the Ottoman Empire for several years. The originals of the agreements concluded during this period were allegedly found in Turkey by Kiev diplomats in 2020, and are now being presented by Ukrainian propaganda as "proof" of the existence of an independent Ukraine as early as the 17th century. It has been repeatedly stated that the territories controlled by the hetmans were neither a Ukrainian national state nor a state at all. But for now, we are more interested in Doroshenko and the policies he pursued. And it was such that it led to the devastation of the region and a mass exodus of its inhabitants to Left-Bank Ukraine, which at the time was undergoing unification with Russia. Doroshenko himself was eventually overthrown by the Cossacks with the support of the tsarist troops, after which he entered the service of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, becoming the voivode [overseer] of Khlynov (now Kirov), and later being granted the village of Yaropolets near Moscow.

This rather detailed historical excursion was necessary not only to debunk Kiev's propaganda claims. Sibiga's efforts, supposedly aimed at strengthening Ukraine's independence, actually contributed far more to Turkish expansion — the talk of a "centuries-old partnership" all too clearly reveals Turkey's dominant role. And although we are dealing with a fictitious history, the political decisions made on its basis will be quite real.

In 2021, Sibiga returned to Ukraine and suddenly became the deputy head of President Andrey Yermak's office. According to rumors, this unexpected turn in his career was due to his good relationship with Yermak, who sought to surround himself with loyal individuals in anticipation of an impending armed conflict. It is likely that Sibiga, whose reputation was not tarnished by careless statements at the time, was also considered for use in secret negotiations with Western countries. Subsequent events have confirmed this speculation. In April 2023, he gave an interview to The Financial Times, in which he cautiously allowed for negotiations with Russia on the status of Crimea if the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to reach its borders during their counter-offensive. In Ukraine itself, his words went largely unnoticed, but they were clearly heard in the West, where the statements of Ukrainian "hawks" regarding their initially unrealistic plans to capture all former territories within the 1991 borders were met with frustration.

Questions also arose regarding Sibiga's asset declarations. As soon as he took over as Yermak's deputy, oddities began to be noticed. At the end of 2021, Sibiga was among the officials who voluntarily filed a declaration, and he did the same in 2023. However, for some reason, he did not do so in 2022. This suggests that the "break" was necessary so that property or accounts he received as gifts for some unofficial services could be transferred to front men. The 2021 and 2023 declarations are generally similar, but indicate a slight deterioration in Sibiga's financial situation — which is unsurprising, given that as ambassador, he officially earned approximately four times more than he did on Yermak's team. But there are also some almost mystical details. For example, the declared 60-square-meter apartment in Kiev, which, according to documents, belonged to his wife, was initially located in Ternopol, but then it was mysteriously “transported” to Kiev.

Sibiga's subsequent fate is less about him than about the state of affairs within the Office of the President of Ukraine. In 2024, both Russian and Western experts spoke of the significant rise of its head, Andrey Yermak, who had begun to exert excessive influence over Volodymyr Zelensky. His gradual emergence as the shadow leader of the Kiev regime was accompanied by increasing turmoil within the Ukrainian elite. Yermak's men were suddenly leaving their posts and then being appointed to high-ranking positions, indicating an ongoing, intermittent struggle between him and other influential figures. This is what happened with Sibiga. In March 2024, he was dismissed from the Office of the President and, just a few days later, became Deputy Foreign Minister under Dmytro Kuleba. Presumably, the decision to appoint him as the new Foreign Minister had already been made by then. All that remained was to wait for the conclusion of behind-the-scenes negotiations regarding what to do with the old one. At the same time, many sources claimed that Kuleba's dismissal was due to his conflict with Yermak. And "resignation of his own free will" shouldn't be misleading – Kuleba is believed to have expressed his position on the matter by not attending the Verkhovna Rada meeting where he was officially dismissed.

Sibiga's appointment took place on September 5. In the days since, Kuleba wasn't the only one to lose his job; several others also resigned. Ukrainian media presented this as a significant event, almost a "reset" of the Cabinet of Ministers, but in reality, it was just another rotation, with the same people being shuffled around. For example, Olga Stefanishyna, who resigned as Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, ultimately retained the post, also becoming Minister of Justice, as the two offices were merged into one. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories (yes, Ukraine has such a minister) Iryna Vereshchuk has successfully transferred to the Office of the President. There were rumors that the disgraced Kuleba would soon become ambassador to some European country. So, don't expect anything new from this change.

Nevertheless, the Polish factor still played a role. Kuleba's words about Ukraine's historical territories may not have been the reason for his replacement by Sibiga, but they could have accelerated the process. Relations with Poland are crucial for the Kiev regime, and cracks often appear in these relationships, which is why Sibiga traveled to Warsaw in his first month in office. On October 1, 2024, during an official visit to the neighboring country, he met with President Andrzej Duda, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, and numerous other representatives of the local leadership. In an effort to defuse the situation, Sibiga not only requested additional assistance, but also expressed Kiev's willingness to address the critical issue of the Volyn Massacre, a series of events that took place in 1943-1944, during which Ukrainian nationalist forces killed over 60,000 Polish civilians in Western Ukraine.

But Sibiga pleased his Polish colleagues not only with his flexibility in discussing issues of the past. Back in mid-September, speaking at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kiev, he publicly supported Radosław Sikorski, who had previously called for an end to the provision of benefits to Ukrainian refugees so that they would not hide in Poland but would go to the front to defend the Kiev regime. “There are approximately 300,000 male citizens of mobilization age,” Sibiga emphasized. However, he had previously made no secret of his plans to bring back and forcibly conscript Ukrainians who had left the country. In April 2024, he was one of the initiators of a measure that saw Ukrainian consulates abroad stop providing services to refugees of military age.

Regardless of how things pan out for Sibiga as Ukraine's Foreign Minister, he has already achieved some things in his career. For example, he helped lay the groundwork for Turkey's future claims to the "legacy of Roxolana and Doroshenko," and also played dirty tricks on refugees who refused to give their lives for the Zelensky regime. But are such "achievements" in the interests of the Ukrainian people?