Editor’s note: This story has been updated with confirmation from President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n
Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, arrived in Miami for talks with U.S. officials, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on May 7.<\/p>\n
The visit comes as U.S.-mediated peace negotiations<\/a> between Ukraine and Russia have remained stalled for more than two months, with Washington increasingly focused on the conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian president said<\/a> that Umerov would focus on humanitarian matters, including prisoner-of-war exchanges and efforts to revive the peace process with Russia during his visit.<\/p>\n Zelensky added that the negotiator had been given “several specific security-related instructions” concerning Ukraine’s cooperation with the United States, without elaborating further. <\/p>\n According to Bloomberg<\/a>, Umerov was expected to meet U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff during the trip. A White House official confirmed that preparations for the meeting were underway.<\/p>\n Kyiv had hoped Witkoff and fellow envoy Jared Kushner would travel to Ukraine<\/a> to help restart negotiations with Russia<\/a>. But concerns have grown<\/a> in Washington that renewed engagement could again fail to produce meaningful results.<\/p>\n While Kyiv is seeking to restart negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said<\/a> earlier in April that talks with Ukraine are not currently a priority for Moscow.<\/p>\n Key disagreements continue to prevent progress, particularly over Russia’s territorial demands.<\/p>\n Kyiv argues that freezing the current front line is the most realistic basis for a ceasefire. Moscow, meanwhile, continues to demand that Ukrainian forces<\/a> withdraw from parts of Donbas<\/a> as a condition for any settlement \u2014 a proposal Ukraine has rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor’s note: This story has been updated with confirmation from President Volodymyr Zelensky. Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-263226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}