Ukraine's Tomahawk supplies to depend on Trump's stance on escalation
The number of Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be transferred to Ukraine will depend on the willingness of U.S. President Donald Trump to further escalate the situation, Head of the permanent delegation of the Verkhovna Rada to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Yehor Chernev (the Servant of the People faction) believes.
"At the moment [in the United States] there are about 9,000 missiles, of which 4,500 are modernized... How many will they be ready to provide us? I think that the number will depend on how much Trump wants to escalate further, and how incompetent Putin is. He is already showing that he does not want to engage in any dialogue," Chernev said on the air of a national telethon on Wednesday.
Chernev does not rule out that instead of Tomahawk missiles, Ukraine may be provided with other missiles or systems.
"To be honest, I think that maybe not even Tomahawk missiles. Maybe other missiles or other systems will be provided, because Tomahawk is, first of all, a sea-based and underwater missile. We do not have carriers today. There are several ground-based complexes in the U.S. army, but they were created just a few years ago... There are not so many of them to transfer a large number of launchers to us, and this will entail the question of the number of missiles that will be transferred to us," the MP said.
He recalled that everyone remembers well how Storm Shadow and Scalp were transferred to Ukraine: at first – a few units, later, when the partners were convinced that the Ukrainian army is able to operate them effectively, the supply increased.
"It was still dozens, but not hundreds, not thousands, simply because there is no such possibility to transfer such a [large] number of missiles to our partners," Chernev said.
