Trump Says No Plans to Send Tomahawk Missiles to Ukraine ‘For Now’
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is not currently considering the transfer of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, though he did not rule out changing his mind in the future.
The Gaze reports this, referring to the White House broadcast.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked whether Washington plans to supply Kyiv with Tomahawk missiles, which can strike targets at ranges of up to 2,500 kilometers. “No. Not that I couldn’t change my mind, but for now – no,” he replied.
When pressed on what might convince him that Russian President Vladimir Putin has no interest in ending the war, Trump suggested the conflict still needs time to “burn out.”
“There’s no ‘last straw.’ Sometimes you have to let a war burn out. They’re fighting – they’re fighting each other,” he said.
Trump acknowledged the scale of losses suffered by both sides, saying that Russia may have lost as many as a million soldiers. “It’s a hard war for both sides. Sometimes you just have to let it reach its end,” he added.
The U.S. president also noted that he had “settled eight wars” during his previous tenure and believed the Russian-Ukrainian war could be resolved more easily than some of those earlier conflicts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly urged the United States to provide Tomahawk missiles, arguing that their long-range precision would bolster Ukraine’s ability to deter Russian attacks. Ukrainian officials have said that Moscow fears Kyiv could combine such Western systems with domestically developed weaponry.
Zelenskyy raised the issue again during his October visit to the White House, where the missile transfer was one of the key topics in his talks with Trump.
Despite support from the Pentagon, which, according to CNN, has approved the potential transfer, the final decision rests with the U.S. president, who has so far declined to authorize it.
As The Gaze reported earlier, U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles, with ranges varying from approximately 1,600 to 2,500 kilometers depending on the variant, would allow Ukraine to strike heavily fortified and high-value targets that were previously out of reach.