Why Trump decided not to hand Ukraine its secret weapon

Donald Trump appears to have decided against supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, after crunch talks with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile is a long-range cruise missile typically launched from sea to attack targets deep into enemy territory.

With a range of 2,500 km (1,500 miles), 1,945 Russian military assets and the city of Moscow would have been in the range of the weapon, dramatically expanding Ukraine’s retaliation to the Russian invasion.

Trump had previously hinted he would provide the weapons to Nato who could then supply to them Ukraine.

“I might say: ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks,” the US President told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Israel earlier this week.

But after the White House meeting on Saturday, Trump appeared to have cooled on the idea, saying he hoped to end the war without Tomahawks. So what changed Trump’s mind?

Risk of nuclear war

Russia has made it clear that the Tomahawk supply would escalate the war and may even trigger nuclear war.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned that it was impossible to distinguish between Tomahawk missiles carrying nuclear warheads and conventional ones after they are launched, and hinted that Russia’s response to a Tomahawk attack may be nuclear.

Medvedev, who is also deputy director of Russia’s security council, added: “How should Russia respond? Exactly!”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said last week that “the topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern”, describing any sale as a “very dramatic moment” with “tensions escalating from all sides”.

“Just imagine: a long-range missile is launched and is flying and we know that it could be nuclear,” Peskov said. “What should the Russian Federation think? Just how should Russia react? Military experts overseas should understand this.”

It is hard to know how serious a threat this is, as Russia has made several warnings of nuclear war already.

But Zelensky appeared to recognise this escalation risk as the primary reason for the failure to agree a deal, telling reporters that he and Trump had talked about long-range missiles but decided not to make statements on the issue “because the United States does not want an escalation”.

Asked if he was more optimistic after the meeting that Ukraine would get the Tomahawks, he said: “I am realistic.”

Bringing the US into the war

Following threats from Russia, Trump may also have felt that the supply of Tomahawks would mark too much US involvement in the war.

In a call this week, the Kremlin said that Putin told Trump that selling Tomahawks to Ukraine would “inflict significant damage” to US-Russia relations and derail peace talks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that it is not possible to use Tomahawks without the direct participation of US military personnel, leading to a “qualitatively new stage of escalation”.

Whether or not he saw this as a serious risk to US security, Trump will be aware that greater US involvement most likely wouldn’t appeal to his voter base.

Trump won the presidential election with an isolationist approach to foreign policy, slashing international aid and promising to end American involvement in “forever wars” overseas.

Tony Brenton, the former British ambassador to Russia, said Trump had made it clear that he believes “Ukraine is not really America’s war, it’s Europe’s war, and while they’re willing to be supportive up to a point… Europe should be carrying the major burden of arming Ukraine and giving financial help to Ukraine”.

Depleting US supply

A concern for many Ukrainian allies throughout the war has been giving too much away and weakening their own arsenals.

Ukraine would require a relatively new land-launched variant of the Tomahawk missile, because it does not have the ships and submarines the missiles are usually launched from.

These land launchers are in relatively short supply and the US army reportedly only has two.

Trump said the US could not “deplete” its own supply of Tomahawks, saying “we need them too, so I don’t know what we can do about that”.