supply more weapons for Ukraine<\/a>, paid for by European countries. But Kyiv officials are keen to lock in Washington\u2019s future support amid fears that the Republican administration could walk away from the conflict.<\/p>\n\u201cTo us it is very important, in the context of what is happening now, to strengthen ties with the U.S.,\u201d Zelenskyy said last week.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian leader recently said that he thought Shmyhal would make a good defense minister \u2014 a move that would make the current defense chief, Rustem Umerov, available to take over as Ukraine\u2019s envoy to Washington, observers note.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy had previously voiced his intention to replace U.S. Ambassador Oksana Markarova.<\/p>\n
Umerov, 43, was appointed as Ukraine\u2019s defense minister in September 2023, following a series of corruption scandals. He has sought to introduce reforms, but critics said that the Defense Ministry was plagued by mismanagement.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Follow AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 Ukraine\u2019s prime minister announced his resignation Tuesday in the first formal step of what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[51,32,2000,299,4179,8617,106725,285,7661,24392,657,7662,2601,7660,6709,10673,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-285035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-military-and-defense","14":"tag-oksana-markarova","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","17":"tag-scandals","18":"tag-ukraine","19":"tag-ukraine-government","20":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","21":"tag-war-and-unrest","22":"tag-washington","23":"tag-washington-news","24":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114902233490522212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}