MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Sunday Russia was deeply concerned about the possibility of the U.S. supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, warning that the war had reached a dramatic moment with escalation from all sides.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that before agreeing to provide Tomahawks, he would want to know what Ukraine planned to do with them because he did not want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine. He said, however, that he had “sort of made a decision” on the matter.
Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500 km (1,550 miles), meaning Ukraine would be able to use them for long-range strikes deep inside Russia, including Moscow. Some retired variants of Tomahawks can carry a nuclear warhead, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
“The topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin in remarks published on Sunday. “Now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides.”
The war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest since World War Two, has sparked the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and Russian officials say they are now in a “hot” conflict with the West.
Peskov said that if Tomahawks were launched at Russia, Moscow would have to take into account that some versions of the missile can carry nuclear warheads.
“Just imagine: a long-range missile is launched and is flying and we know that it could be nuclear. What should the Russian Federation think? Just how should Russia react? Military experts overseas should understand this,” Peskov said.
Russian President Vladimir 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”.
The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the U.S. has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months. The FT said U.S. intelligence helps Kyiv shape route planning, altitude, timing and mission decisions, enabling Ukraine’s long-range, one-way attack drones to evade Russian air defences.
Putin portrays the war 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 Guy Faulconbridge;Editing by Helen Popper)
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