Putin warns Trump: 'With Tomahawks in Ukraine serious escalation'
Moscow alarmed at possible US support for Kiev with long-range missiles. Ukrainian forces would have the capability to strike targets all over Russia. For the Kremlin 'it would be the end of all negotiations'
by Luca Veronese - New York
On the Tomahawk missiles, Donald Trump risks a sudden escalation and could jeopardise any remaining possibility of negotiations on the war in Ukraine with former friend Vladimir Putin.
The US president has said he is ready to supply Kiev with US-made cruise missiles, capable of striking well inside Russian territory. The final decision has not yet been made, Trump said he wants to better understand how they will be used by Ukrainian forces. And he is also waiting to carefully assess Moscow's reaction: Trump has given orders to his generals to avoid any further escalation in the clash with Russia and would like to resolve the situation in his own way, by flexing his muscles and exploiting the deterrent force of the new US-made missile supplies.
"I've already made up my mind, more or less," Trump said on Monday night, October 6, from the Oval Office, explaining, however, that he needed more information from the Ukrainian military. "I guess I want to find out what they're doing with it. You know, where they're sending them. I'm asking questions," he added, "I'm not going to escalate that war. I thought it would be the easiest crisis to solve and instead it's more difficult than the Middle East.
Putin had already warned the West, in a message on Russian state television, on the evening of Sunday, 5 October: if Washington supplies Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine 'this,' the Russian leader had declared, 'will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least of the positive tendencies that have emerged in these relations'.
On Tuesday, 7 October, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump in an even more tense manner: "Forget the nuances, with the Tomahawks there would be a serious escalation, because these are missiles that can also carry nuclear warheads," he stressed. However, we know that we will probably have to wait for clearer statements, if any, from Trump. Peskov then attempted to lower the tone: "We reiterate that, at the moment, we always assume that President Trump maintains the political will to promote a solution to the Ukrainian conflict through a channel of peaceful political negotiations," he added.
