Trump mulls Tomahawks for Ukraine after Gaza hostages triumph
Fresh from his Middle East peace breakthrough, the US President warns Putin he may approve Ukraine's request for powerful Tomahawk missiles capable of striking deep into Russia.
Buoyed by his success in ending the conflict in Gaza, US President Donald Trump is now looking to the “easiest” war he had hoped to conclude, threatening to step up assistance and provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles to use against Russia.
NATO defence ministers are meeting in Brussels on Wednesday where the provision of Tomahawks will be central to the agenda following recent calls to the White House from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the advanced weaponry as well as Patriot air defence systems.
As he flew to the Middle East on Air Force One on Monday, Mr Trump said in relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “I might say ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks’.
“Do they want to have Tomahawks going in that direction? I don’t think so. I think I might speak to Russia about that. Tomahawks are a new step of aggression.”
Mr Trump has been liaising with French President Emmanuel Macron about strengthening Ukraine’s position and is expected to raise the issue with world leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh on the sidelines of negotiating the next steps for peace in the Middle East.
Mr Trump said the United States would not supply the Tomahawks directly to Ukraine, but provide them through NATO.
Mr Zelensky told Mr Trump that Moscow fears the Tomahawks – which have a range of 2500km and cost around $1.3m each – and it could put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the aggression.
He said on Sunday: “We work on it … and I’m waiting for president (Trump) to say yes. Of course we count on such decisions, but we will see. We will see.”
As well as Tomahawks the Ukrainian wish list includes other long-range precision strike weapons and ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.
Putin has authorised some of the strongest waves of drone and missile attacks of the three-and-a-half-year war in recent weeks, including on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after Mr Trump and Putin were unable to find a breakthrough during their talks in August. Russia has been specifically targeting energy infrastructure ahead of the coming winter months.
Mr Zelensky said Russia had attacked Donetsk, Odessa and Chernihiv.
“Russia continues its aerial terror against our cities and communities, intensifying strikes on our energy infrastructure,” said Mr Zelensky, adding the attack over the past week involved “more than 3100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1360 glide bombs”.
When he announced the Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal, Mr Trump also reflected on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“The one that I thought maybe would be the quickest of all, would be Russia-Ukraine, and I think that’s going to happen too, but in the meantime they are losing about 7000 people a week and that seems pretty bad. Mostly soldiers, young soldiers, they go out to war and they are getting killed.”
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the topic of Tomahawks is of “extreme concern”, warning that “now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides”.
But Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a major Putin ally, doubted that Mr Trump would escalate the tensions in such a way.
“I think we need to calm down in this regard,’’ Mr Lukashenko to Russian state media. “Our friend Donald, sometimes he takes a more forceful approach, and then, his tactic is to let go a little and step back. Therefore, we shouldn’t take this literally, as if it’s going to fly tomorrow”.
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