Trump hesitant to send Kyiv Tomahawk missiles
As President Donald Trump hosts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for talks at the White House, the US leader is signaling that he is not ready to agree to sell to Kiev the long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.
Zelenskiy arrived with top aides on Friday to discuss the latest developments with Trump over lunch, a day after the US president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.
At the beginning of the talks, Zelenskiy congratulated Trump on reaching a ceasefire and hostage agreement in Gaza last week and said Trump now had “momentum” to stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“President Trump now has a great chance to end this war,” Zelenskiy said.
In recent days, Trump has indicated that he is open to selling long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, although Putin has warned that such a move would further strain US-Russia relations.
But after a meeting with Putin on Thursday, Trump appeared to downplay the possibility of Ukraine acquiring the missiles, which have a range of about 1,600 kilometers.
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said.
“There are many, but we need them. So we cannot exhaust our country.”
Zelenskiy is seeking weapons that would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure.
Zelenskiy argued that the potential for such attacks would force Putin to take more seriously Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war.
However, according to Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, Putin warned Trump during the meeting that providing Tomahawks to Kiev “will not change the situation on the battlefield, but will seriously damage relations between our countries.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that talk of providing Tomahawks had already served a purpose by pushing Putin into talks.
“The bottom line is that we must continue with strong steps. Strength can truly create momentum for peace,” Sybiha said in a statement on social platform X late Thursday. he said.
Ukrainian officials also stated that Zelenskiy plans to appeal to Trump’s economic interests by aiming to discuss the possibility of energy deals with the United States.
Zelenskiy is expected to offer to store American liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would allow America’s presence in the European energy market.
He previewed the strategy Thursday in meetings with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the heads of American energy companies.
In X, he noted that it was important to repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after Russia’s attacks and expand the “presence of American businesses in Ukraine.”
This will be the fourth face-to-face meeting for Trump and Zelenskiy since Republicans returned to office in January and the second in less than a month.
After his meeting with Putin on Thursday, Trump announced that he would soon meet the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ways to end the war.
Trump, who brokered a ceasefire and hostage agreement between Israel and Hamas, said finding an end to the war in Ukraine was now his top foreign policy priority and expressed new confidence in the possibility of achieving it.
