US President Donald Trump says it would be premature to give Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, as he hosted Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House.
Zelenskyy, who travelled to the US to push for the long-range US-made weapons, on Friday said he was ready to swap “thousands” of Ukrainian drones in exchange for Tomahawks.
The US president’s reluctant stance came a day after he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a call to hold a new summit in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks,” Trump told journalists, as the two leaders met at the White House.
Trump said supplying Ukraine with the powerful missiles despite Putin’s warnings against doing so “could mean big escalation, it could mean a lot of bad things can happen”.
Drones for Tomahawks?
Zelenskyy congratulated Trump on his recent Middle East peace deal in Gaza and expressed hope that he would do the same for Ukraine.
“I hope that President Trump can manage it,” he said.
Ukraine has been lobbying Washington for Tomahawks for weeks, arguing that the missiles could help put pressure on Russia to end its brutal three-and-a-half-year invasion.
Zelenskyy, meeting Trump in Washington for the third time since the US president’s return to power, suggested that “the United States has Tomahawks and other missiles, very strong missiles, but they can have our thousands of drones”.
Trump said the United States had to be careful not to “deplete” its own supplies of Tomahawks, which have a range of over 1,600km. Source: Getty / U.S. Navy
Kyiv has made extensive use of drones since Russia invaded in February 2022.
On the eve of Zelenskyy’s visit, Putin warned Trump in their call against delivering the weapons, saying it could escalate the war and jeopardise peace talks.
Trump said the United States had to be careful not to “deplete” its own supplies of Tomahawks, which have a range of over 1,600km.
Diplomatic talks on ending Russia’s invasion have stalled since the Alaska summit.
The Kremlin on Friday said “many questions” needed resolving before Putin and Trump could meet, including who would be on each negotiating team.
But it brushed off suggestions that Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.
Hungary said it would ensure Putin could enter and “hold successful talks” with the US despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.
Trump frustrations
Since the start of his second term, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.
Initially, Trump and Putin reached out to each other as the US leader derided Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections”.
A meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska in August failed to result in a breakthrough. Source: EPA / Gavrill Grigorov
Tensions came to a head in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not having the cards” in a rancorous televised meeting at the Oval Office.
Relations between the two have since warmed as Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin.
But Trump has kept a channel of dialogue open with Putin, saying that they “get along”.
The US leader has repeatedly changed his position on sanctions and other steps against Russia following calls with the Russian president.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarise the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.
Kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal land grab that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.
Russia now occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory — much of it ravaged by fighting.
