US President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that it would be premature to deliver Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying while hosting Volodymyr Zelensky that he hoped to secure peace with Russia first.
“Hopefully, they won’t need it. Hopefully we can finish the war without thinking about the Tomahawks,” Trump told reporters, including a AFP reporter, as the two leaders met at the White House.
Trump added that he was confident of getting Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion he launched in 2022, following a phone call with the head of the Kremlin a day earlier.
The presidents of the United States and Russia agreed Thursday to hold a new summit in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, which would be the first since an August meeting in Alaska that failed to produce any kind of peace agreement.
“I think President Putin wants to end the war,” Trump said.
But Zelensky, who wore a dark suit for his third meeting with Trump in Washington since the US president’s return to power, demurred and said Putin was “not ready” for peace.
Ukraine has been lobbying Washington for the Tomahawks for weeks, arguing that the missiles could help pressure Russia to end its brutal three-and-a-half-year invasion. But on the eve of Zelensky’s visit, Putin warned Trump in a call against handing over weapons, saying it could escalate the war and jeopardize peace talks.
Trump said the United States needed to be careful not to “deplete” its own supplies of Tomahawks, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles.
‘Many questions’
Diplomatic talks to end the Russian invasion have stalled since the Alaska summit. But Trump, who once said he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, appears determined to seek a breakthrough following the Gaza ceasefire deal he negotiated last week.
The Kremlin said on Friday that “many issues” needed to be resolved before Putin and Trump could meet, including who would be on each negotiating team. But he dismissed suggestions that Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.
Hungary said it would ensure Putin could start and “maintain successful talks” with the United States despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.
“Budapest is the only suitable place in Europe for a US-Russia peace summit,” Hungarian President Viktor Orban said on X on Friday.
Trump frustration
Zelensky’s visit to Washington, Ukraine’s main military backer, will be his third since Trump returned to power. During this time, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.
Early in his term, Trump and Putin grew closer when the American leader mocked Zelensky as a “dictator without elections.”
Tensions came to a head in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not holding the cards” in a rancorous televised meeting in the Oval Office. Since then, relations between the two have improved as Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin.
But Trump has kept an open channel of dialogue with Putin, saying that “they get along well.” The American leader has repeatedly changed his position on sanctions and other measures against Russia after calls with the Russian president.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent NATO expansion.
kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal land grab that has led to tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.
Russia now occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, much of which is devastated by fighting. On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had captured three villages in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv.
