A day after Donald Trump held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US president indicated that he is not ready to agree to hand over long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kiev.
The indication came ahead of Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Donald Trump at the White House and after Putin warned that the sale of long-range missiles to Ukraine could further strain US-Russian relations.
In recent days, Trump has shown openness to selling Ukraine’s Tomahawk missiles. But after his phone call with Putin, Trump seemed to hint that maybe not.
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America as well. We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t exhaust our country,” Donald Trump said.
Zelenskyy is calling for weapons that would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure. He argued that such attacks could prompt Putin to take more seriously Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war.
Zelenskyy is trying to offer the storage of American liquefied natural gas in Ukrainian gas reservoirs, which would allow the American presence in the European energy market.
However, during the call, Putin’s foreign policy adviser said that Vladimir Putin warned Donald Trump that the delivery of long-range Tomahawks to Kiev “will not change the situation on the battlefield, but will cause significant damage to the relationship between our countries.”
Meanwhile, Zelensky insisted that the Tomahawk threat forced Moscow to act. “We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue once it learns about the Tomahawks,” he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also reiterated claims that talk of providing tomahawks had already served its purpose by pushing Putin toward talks.
“The bottom line is that we must continue to take strong steps. Strength can really create an impetus for peace,” Andrii Sybiha said.
Trump-Putin meeting
After a phone call with Putin on Thursday, Trump announced that he would soon meet with the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary to discuss ways to end the war. They also agreed that their top aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will meet next week at an as-yet-undisclosed location.
Zelenskyy is also making a trip to Washington to meet with Donald Trump — his third since Trump’s return to office. “We expect that the dynamics of reducing terror and war, which succeeded in the Middle East, will help to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said on the X social network.
