Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (RNBO) Secretary Rustem Umerov is expected to travel to Miami this week to meet US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Bloomberg reported.
Several previous rounds of talks have brought progress on some issues, but negotiations have remained stalled since work began on a 20-point peace plan in October last year.
Major sticking points include control over part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and the status of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Other obstacles stem from Russia’s expansive territorial claims, disagreements over the nature of security guarantees for Ukraine, and Moscow’s continued opposition to a formal ceasefire.
The planned meeting also comes after public friction between Kyiv and Witkoff. In April, Zelensky criticized Witkoff and Jared Kushner, another US special envoy, over what he described as an imbalance in visits – seven visits to Moscow and none to Kyiv. Zelensky warned that such an imbalance sent the wrong signal to Ukrainians.
Earlier in March, Zelensky said in an interview with Reuters that “the Americans are prepared to finalize these [security] guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas.”
Zelensky warned that such a withdrawal would compromise the security of both Ukraine and, by extension, Europe, by handing the region’s strong defensive positions to Russia.
“I would very much like the American side to understand that the eastern part of our country is part of our security guarantees,” he said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected Zelensky’s claim that Washington had linked future security guarantees for Ukraine to giving up Donbas, saying the Ukrainian leader had misunderstood the message.
“We’ve told the Ukrainian side what the Russians are insisting on. We’re not advocating for it,” Rubio said in Paris after talks with G7 foreign ministers. “We’ve explained it. It’s their choice to make. It’s not for us to make for them.”
He added that Washington’s role was to test whether any middle ground exists between the two sides.
“We’ve never told them they have to take it or leave it,” Rubio said. “The role we have played is to try to figure out what both sides want and see if we can bridge the middle ground.”
The last major high-level meeting between Witkoff and Umerov took place on March 21-22 in Florida and included Kushner.
While not a bilateral meeting, US and Ukrainian officials also attended a high-level summit in London on April 23 to discuss steps toward ending the war.
Earlier, Witkoff and Umerov held extensive talks twice in January – in Paris and later that month in Abu Dhabi. Witkoff has said he and Umerov had spent nearly 100 hours in discussions since late 2025.
This week’s meeting marks the first known high-level direct contact between Kyiv and Washington since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.