Vice President JD Vance said in an interview that aired Sunday that President Trump was considering the possibility of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, a step that would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war, as the missiles have a range of over 1,000 miles.
“You asked this question about Tomahawks. It’s something the president is going to make the final determination on. What the president is going to do is what’s in the best interest for the United States of America … I know that we’re having conversations this very minute about that issue,” Vance said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday.
It’s unclear how Ukraine would use the Tomahawk missiles if they were supplied, as they are designed to be fired by US Navy warships and submarines. Vadym Skibitskyi, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, previously said that Ukraine lacks the naval infrastructure to use sea-launched Tomahawks.
The US could potentially provide Ukraine with its new ground-based Typhon missile launcher, which can fire Tomahawks and was developed after the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. The INF prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles.
Vance didn’t address the risk of escalation that comes with providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. Moscow has previously made clear that US-backed missile strikes on its territory risk nuclear escalation, as it changed its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons after the Biden administration gave the green light for Ukraine to fire US-provided ATACMS missiles into Russia.
When asked about his previous opposition to the US arming Ukraine, the vice president pointed to the fact that the US is now having European countries fund the weapons shipments. However, last month, the administration announced a deal that will arm Ukraine with Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) air-launched missiles, which can hit targets up to 280 miles away, that will be partially funded by US military aid.
Tomahawks would put Moscow in range of Ukrainian missile strikes, and Vance’s comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened that Kremlin officials could become targets if the war continues. “They have to know where the bomb shelters are,” Zelensky said in an interview with Axios. “They need it. If they will not stop the war, they will need it in any case.”
In the same interview, Zelensky said that he had the explicit backing of President Trump to hit Russian energy infrastructure and arms factories and warned that if the US provided additional long-range capabilities, “we will use it.”
Russia, which hasn’t targeted Ukrainian leadership, has dismissed Zelensky’s threat. “Zelensky is trying to demonstrate to the Europeans, who now act as the breadwinners, that he is such a brave soldier,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Meanwhile, the state of affairs at the front indicates the opposite. With every passing day, the situation for Ukraine is inexorably deteriorating.”
