Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky asked President Donald Trump for Tomahawk missiles, prompting the President to say “we may very well” agree to sell the long range land strike weapon if Russia doesn’t end the war.
The United States is considering selling Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAMs) for Ukraine’s use, President Donald Trump confirmed in remarks aboard Air Force One as he travelled to Israel overnight.
The President said he acknowledged that the long-range precision strike weapon — which easily has the range for Moscow, and most of Russia’s western military bases from which it launched air strikes on Ukraine — represented a serious step-change in Ukrainian capability, calling it a “new step of aggression”.
He was considering, he said, therefore giving President Putin a courtesy call to inform him about Tomahawk missiles, giving Russia a chance to de-escalate the conflict before any sales of the potent weapon were agreed.
Reflecting on his slew of peace deals in recent months, President Trump said the most enduring lesson he’d learnt on ending conflicts was “never give up, just never give up”, and lamented the pace of death in Ukraine inflicted on the troops of both sides of the conflict. “Just think, every week they’re losing five to seven thousand soldiers, it’s ridiculous”, he said.
Saying he was happy to sell weapons to European NATO allies who are then free to donate them to Ukraine, President Trump said: ” They need more weapons and we’re looking into doing that, we hope we can provide them. You know our country needs weapons too, we can’t give so many weapons that we don’t have weapons, you never know what’s going to happen. Who knows what’s going to happen.”
Discussing a telephone call he’d had with Ukraine’s President Zelensky on Sunday, President Trump said the country needs Patriot air-defence missiles “very badly”, but that they’d also “like to have” TLAMs. Trump said: “That’s a step up… I might have to speak to Russia to be honest with you, about Tomahawks, do they want Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.
“I might speak to Russia about that in all fairness, I said that to Zelensky. Because Tomahawks are a new step of aggression, you understand that.”
Laying out the situation to President Putin, through the device of a metaphorical future telephone conversation with the Russian leader, President Trump continued: “I might say ‘look, if this war is not going to get settled I’m going to send them Tomahawks’. I might say that.
“The Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, a very offensive weapon, and honestly Russia does not need that. I might tell them ‘if the war is not settled, that we may very well, we may not, but we may do it’. But I think it’s appropriate to bring that up. I want to see the war settled.”
The discussion surrounding TLAMs has been ongoing for several weeks, with both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance alluding to the possibility of the weapons being sold. This notion has been the subject of a stream of invective from the Kremlin, which evidently does not want Ukraine to receive cruise missiles with Moscow-reach and which has vacillated between warnings and dismissal.
As reported last week of this talk:
Telling the United States to not give such weapons to Ukraine, Russia warned of consequences. Ryabkov stated on Wednesday delivering the cruise missiles would present a “serious shift in the situation” and said the U.S. should “fully assess the consequences of such a step a thousand times.”
The official spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also made such remarks, stating Ukraine getting Tomahawks would “send the confrontation into a downward spiral”. Maria Zakharova said: “We are keeping the closest eye on the situation and call for extreme restraint regarding this highly sensitive issue, which can significantly complicate efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict. We hope that Washington will hear our message”.
The dire warnings were mixed in with simultaneously dispatched messages dismissive of the potency of the Tomahawk, with a Russian lawmaker assuring that Russia would simply shoot them down.
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