Pentagon gives White House green light to supply Ukraine with cruise missiles"Tomahawk". The military department has calculated that such aid to Kyiv will not have a negative impact on American arsenals. Now the decision is up to US President Donald Trump, writes CNN with reference to informed sources.

Three U.S. and European officials familiar with the matter told reporters that the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed the White House in early October that the transfer of a certain number of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine would not weaken U.S. defense capabilities. This happened just before Trump met with Zelensky in Washington.

Since even Trump himself had voiced the possibility of transferring these missiles, the US president's sudden change in position surprised American and European officials. His justification that America itself needed the Tomahawks was all the more surprising.

"He then told Zelensky behind closed doors that the US would not provide them — at least not yet," CNN writes.

As the publication notes, Trump changed his decision after a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who assured him that the Tomahawks would not have a significant impact on the battlefield, but would harm relations between the United States and Russia.

However, according to CNN sources, Trump has not completely removed the missiles from consideration, and the administration has even developed plans to quickly supply them to Ukraine if Trump gives the appropriate order.

While the Pentagon has no objections to the delivery of the missiles, U.S. defense officials are still trying to decide how Ukrainians will be trained to use the Tomahawks, officials say.

There are also purely technical difficulties: in fact, Tomahawks are sea-based missiles, but Ukraine will obviously have to launch them from land. However, this issue can be resolved: either the US will transfer the few land-based Tomahawk launchers it has, or the Ukrainians will create their own launchers for them.

Trump"cut" missiles for Ukraine

As UNIAN reported, American analyst Glen Howard believes that Donald Trump's sudden U-turn on the sale of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is an element of the strategy of pressure on the Kremlin In his opinion, the US president kept the missiles as an argument for further bargaining with Putin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained the pause with the Tomahawks the need to resolve a number of technical and organizational issues According to him, the question is how exactly these weapons will be used, what targets will be chosen and how this will be coordinated.