Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have come away empty-handed from a White House meeting after US President Donald Trump indicated he was not ready to supply sought-after Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Zelensky said after the cordial bilateral talks 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”.
Following the meeting, Trump took to social media to call for Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end the war.
The Trump-Zelensky meeting came a day after Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone and agreed to meet him in Hungary soon.
Zelensky believes using Tomahawks to strike at Russian oil and energy facilities would severely weaken Putin’s war economy.
While Trump did not rule it out, his tone at the White House on Friday was non-committal.
“Hopefully they won’t need it, hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks,” the US president said, adding: “I think we’re fairly close to that.”
He described the weapons as “a big deal” and said that the US needed them for its own defence. He also said that supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine could mean a further escalation in the conflict, but that discussions bout sending them would continue.
Asked by the BBC if the Tomahawks had prompted Putin to meet Trump, the US president said: “The threat of that [the missiles] is good, but the threat of that is always there.”
