By Phil Stewart, Steve Holland and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he may offer long-range Tomahawk missiles that could be used by Kyiv if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not end the war in Ukraine.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Israel that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy discussed Zelenskiy's request for weaponry, including Tomahawks. They spoke by phone on Saturday and Sunday.
Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500 km (1,550 miles), long enough to strike deep inside Russia, including Moscow. The Kremlin has warned against any provision of Tomahawks to Ukraine, and Trump on Sunday said they would be "a new step of aggression" if introduced into the war.
The United States would not sell missiles directly to Ukraine, but provide them to NATO, which can then offer them to the Ukrainians, Trump said. "Yeah, I might tell him (Putin), if the war is not settled, we may very well do it,” he said. "We may not, but we may do it. … Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so."
Zelenskiy said earlier that Ukraine would only use Tomahawk missiles for military purposes and not attack civilians in Russia, should the U.S. provide them.
"We never attacked their civilians. This is the big difference between Ukraine and Russia," the Ukrainian leader said on the Fox News "Sunday Briefing" program. "That's why, if we speak about long-range (missiles), we speak only about military goals."
Zelenskiy's comments, which were recorded on Saturday, aired on Sunday after his second talks in as many days with U.S. President Donald Trump. The Ukrainian leader said they are still discussing the possibility that Washington might provide Kyiv with the long-range missiles.
Trump said last week that before agreeing to provide Tomahawks he wants to know how Ukraine would use them because he does not want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine. Zelenskiy said he was still working on trying to convince Trump to approve a missile deal.
"We count on such decisions, but we'll see," Zelenskiy said.
Putin said earlier this month that it was impossible to use Tomahawks without the direct participation of U.S. military personnel and so any supply of such missiles to Ukraine would trigger a "qualitatively new stage of escalation."
Still, Zelenskiy, in a Sunday evening address in Ukraine, said he saw Russia's concerns as reason to press forward.
"We see and hear that Russia is afraid that the Americans may give us Tomahawks — that this kind of pressure may work for peace," Zelenskiy said.
The war in Ukraine is Europe's deadliest since World War II, and Russian officials say they are now in a "hot" conflict with the West. Putin portrays it as a watershed moment in Moscow's relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence, including Ukraine and Georgia.
Ukraine and its allies have cast it as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Steve Holland and Jasper Ward; Additional reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Diane Craft)
