Trump says it is not ‘easy’ for US to give Tomahawk missiles to Zelensky, Ukraine
President Trump during a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it is not “easy” for the U.S. to give long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, as Washington needs the powerful munitions in its stockpile also.
“It’s not easy for us to give … you’re talking about massive numbers of very powerful weapons,” Trump said Friday.
“So, that’s one of the things we’ll be talking about hopefully, they won’t need it, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the war over with, without thinking about Tomahawks,” he added at the White House.
The possible delivery of Tomahawk missiles has become a major point of discussion this week after Trump floated the idea.
On Friday, the Ukrainian leader emphasized that his military does not use just Tomahawks and suggested that Kyiv could send “thousands” of its drones to the U.S. in exchange for the long-range missiles, which are typically fired from warships and submarines.
“You don’t use just Tomahawks. If you want to target a military goal, you need thousands of drones. It goes together with such missiles. Ukraine has such thousands of our production drones, but we don’t have Tomahawks. That’s why we need Tomahawks,” Zelensky said Friday.
“But [the] United States is a very strong production and the United States has Tomahawks and other missiles, very strong missiles, but they can have our thousands of drones,” the Ukrainian president added. “That’s why, where we can work together, where we can strengthen American production.”
The missiles, designed to fly at high subsonic speeds and at low altitudes to better evade radars would provide Kyiv with a lot more range and capability to hit Russian military targets and energy facilities, such as oil and gas infrastructure, experts told The Hill this week.
The Tomahawks, which the U.S. began developing in the 1970s and were first fired by the U.S. military during in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, can have a range up to 1,000 miles, depending on the variant.
Russia has warned the U.S. against sending the missiles to Ukraine, arguing it would represent a major escalation.
Trump is focused on seeking a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and he said Thursday he would be holding new talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary in the coming weeks.
Trump could want to use the possible delivery of U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine as leverage ahead of those talks.
Zelensky has been clear in his desire for the missiles — something Trump acknowledged well before Friday’s discussion.
“I know what he has to say. He wants weapons. He would like to have Tomahawks. Everyone else wants to, and we have a lot of Tomahawks,” Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House.
Updated at 2:48 p.m. EDT