Trump hasn’t closed the door to sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine

By Alayna Treene, Zachary Cohen, Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump did not take the possibility of the US sending long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine off the table during his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, sources familiar with their conversation told CNN.

But Trump is also not expected to commit to providing the potentially game changing American-made weapons in his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday, two of the sources said, though they cautioned that things can always change once the president is alone in a room with the Ukrainians.

The US president, in both public and private, has appeared more willing to allow Ukraine to obtain the long-range missiles in recent weeks, US officials said. The administration has drawn up plans to provide the weapons to Ukraine, the officials said, in case Trump gives the order, which they stress he can do at any time if he feels it is right.

Trump had been holding off, hoping to ascertain from Zelensky a better idea of how he planned to use them, the officials added.

Zelensky and his top aides have described the weapons — which have a range of more than 1,000 miles — as potentially turning the tide in the war against Russia. And they’ve said they viewed the possibility of receiving them as an attractive threat that Zelensky hoped would force Putin back to the table.

And that’s exactly what it appears to have done — though it remains unclear what, if anything, may have changed since Trump and Putin met in Alaska two months ago that would make the prospect of a peace agreement more likely.

Roughly 24 hours before Zelensky was slated to meet with Trump in Washington, Putin made a last-ditch attempt to intervene with the American president and halt all talk of sending the lethal US weapons to Kyiv.

His lengthy phone call resulted in a promise to have the two leaders meet in Budapest “within two weeks or so,” in Trump’s telling — which appears to have bought Moscow more time as Trump’s desire to reach a peace agreement has grown even further following his administration’s success in Middle East negotiations.

Trump, however, did not drop his new military threats while speaking with Putin on Thursday.

“I did actually say, ‘Would you mind if I gave a couple thousand Tomahawks to your opposition?’ I did say that to him. I said it just that way,” Trump told reporters later that day. “He didn’t like the idea.”

A Trump administration official argued it’s all about leverage: “Why would he give up that leverage? He won’t remove the threat until it’s no longer necessary.”

Another US official echoed that sentiment, telling CNN that Trump is looking to bring the war to an end and is focusing on a diplomatic approach first — suggesting the threat of sending Tomahawks to Ukraine is one tool he has at his disposal as part of that effort.

Putin is said to have stressed during the call that Tomahawks – which have the range to target major Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg – would have no significant impact on the battlefield, CNN previously reported. But they would damage the US-Russian relationship, he argued.

Putin has previously argued that if Trump chooses to send the long-range missiles to Ukraine, it would completely alter the level of US involvement in the war thus far, noting that the weapons would likely require Americans to operate them.

The risk of escalation is also a concern among some US officials, though others said previous steps that appeared escalatory — like allowing Ukraine to have more powerful missile systems or weapons — did not significantly escalate the conflict.

The-CNN-Wire
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