The Pentagon has given the White House the green light to supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles. The Pentagon believes the move would not negatively impact U.S. weapons stockpiles, so the final decision will be up to President Donald Trump, three U.S. and European officials close to the matter told CNN.
Trump said at a working lunch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House earlier this month that he would rather not supply missiles to Ukraine because"we don't want to give away things that we need to defend our country."
A few days before his meeting with Zelensky, Trump said the United States had “a lot of Tomahawks” that it could potentially give to Ukraine. Trump spoke by phone with Putin before the meeting, and Putin told the US president that the Tomahawks could be used to attack major Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
While the Pentagon has no concerns about the missile stockpile, U.S. defense officials are still considering how Ukraine will train and deploy the missiles, the officials said. Sources say there are still several operational issues that need to be resolved before Ukraine can effectively use the missiles. One open question is how Ukraine would launch the missiles if the United States provided them. Tomahawk missiles are most often launched from ships or submarines, but the Ukrainian navy is severely depleted, so the missiles would likely have to be launched from land. The Marine Corps and Army have developed land-based launchers that could be provided to Ukraine.
But even if the United States were unwilling to provide the launchers, European officials believe Ukraine could find a workaround. One official pointed out that Ukrainian engineers had managed to develop a solution to use the Storm Shadow missiles provided by the United Kingdom. These were originally designed for modern NATO aircraft and had to be integrated into Ukraine’s aging, Soviet-era fighter fleet.
