Sergiy Kyslytsya

Sergiy Kyslytsya is First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, a senior diplomatic and legal official with extensive experience at the United Nations, where he previously served as Ukraine's Permanent Representative. His appointment to lead Ukraine's negotiating delegation reflects Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to send a credentialled multilateral diplomat rather than a frontline political figure to the opening round of renewed talks.

On 19 March 2026, Zelenskyy announced Kyslytsya would head a Ukrainian team travelling to Washington for a 21 March meeting, the first formal diplomatic movement since Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner cancelled the Istanbul trilateral on 4 March . Russia had not confirmed it would send a delegation, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the pause situational and blaming the Iran conflict for consuming American attention.

The appointment carries an inherent tension: Kyslytsya's mandate is to advance a diplomatic process whose counterpart has yet to show up. With the US simultaneously diverting Ukrainian arms funds to restock its own Iran-war inventories, the asymmetry of the talks raises the question of whether Washington can be a credible broker while managing two theatres at once.