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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday appointed Nariman Dzhelyalov as Ukraine’s new ambassador to Türkiye, just a day before peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to take place in Istanbul.
The appointment was confirmed in a presidential decree published by Ukraine’s Presidential Office, following Zelenskyy’s approval of Dzhelyalov’s candidacy in December 2024.
Dzhelyalov replaces Vasyl Bodnar, who was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland in October 2024 after serving three years in Ankara. Bodnar had succeeded Ukraine’s current Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
Prior to his new post, Dzhelyalov, 45, served as the first deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People since 2013. Russian authorities detained him in September 2021. He was released in June last year as part of a prisoner exchange.
The appointment comes as Türkiye prepares to host peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul on May 15. The meeting follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal for direct negotiations during a Sunday press conference in Moscow.
Putin rejected a 30-day cease-fire initiative backed by Ukraine and its Western allies — a plan Kyiv says Moscow has “completely ignored.”
Previous efforts to broker peace in Türkiye, including failed negotiations in Istanbul in April 2022 just two months after the war began, are widely seen as a missed opportunity.
The upcoming Istanbul summit is expected to be the highest-level face-to-face contact between Russian and Ukrainian officials in more than a year. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Russian forces currently occupy about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
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