Rada delegation to NATO PA: Issue of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles to be put on hold
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not discuss the issue of supplies of U.S. long-range Tomahawk missiles during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Yehor Cherniev has said.
"I think that for now the issue of Tomahawk missiles will be put on hold, but the entire range of other issues will be discussed [at the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump]. This includes providing us with more air defense systems... This includes cooperation between our defense enterprises," Cherniev said on the national telethon on Friday.
He said that the day before, the Ukrainian delegation had held meetings with representatives of large enterprises of the U.S. defense-industrial complex, during which this issue was discussed.
According to Cherniev, the issue of supplying Tomahawk missiles will be postponed until the results of Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin. He noted that Ukraine's European partners expect that after this meeting "either there will again be some concrete results regarding peace in Ukraine from Putin, or the issue of providing us with Tomahawk missiles will still be unblocked."
"Again, it was expected that a decision would be made on the Tomahawk missiles, but it is clear that Putin was afraid of such a transfer, afraid of such a step by the United States. Therefore, this issue has been postponed, postponed until the meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest, which is due to take place in the coming weeks, and therefore the expectations of our European partners and NATO are that either there will again be some concrete results after this meeting regarding peace in Ukraine from Putin, or the issues of providing us with the Tomahawk missiles and in fact not only the Tomahawks, but also a wider range of weapons that the United States has will still be unblocked," the MP said.
He also expressed his belief that Trump's conversation with Putin will in no way affect the purchase of the U.S. weapons for Ukraine. "This is a mutually beneficial story for the United States. They receive money for this. For Europeans, this is a matter of defense, including their own security," Cherniev said.
At the same time, he suggested that if after the meeting between Trump and Putin, the latter nevertheless enters into peace negotiations and demonstrates "some progress," then perhaps the United States will change its position and may promise that it will no longer provide military assistance to Ukraine, "but this will be part of a peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine." "The Tomahawk missiles are still a unilateral decision of the United States, which they can provide and they will, conditionally speaking, bear responsibility for the use of such weapons, but again, Ukraine, not the United States," the head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the NATO PA.
