Ukrainian officials are reportedly planning to demand that Washington send Tomahawk missiles to Kiev and allow their use against targets deep inside Russia before President Joe Biden’s term is up, a Ukrainian lawmaker has told Politico.
Tomahawk cruise missiles, which entered service in the US in the 1980s, have a range of up to 2500 kilometers – seven times that of ATACMS missiles.
Earlier this week, several media outlets reported that the White House had authorized the use of ATACMS missiles by the Ukrainian military for strikes on Russia’s internationally recognized territory. Washington has not officially confirmed the reports, but Moscow has said several of the missiles have already been fired into Russia’s Bryansk Region.
In an article published on Wednesday, Politico reported that Ukrainian officials do not see the ATACMS decision as sufficient to change the situation on the battlefield, and are hoping for more powerful weaponry from the US.
According to Egor Cherniev, a Ukrainian member of parliament and head of the country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Kiev is considering approaching the Biden administration to allow the use of Tomahawk missiles to hit Russian military factories that are currently “out of Ukraine’s reach.”
He noted that Ukrainian officials are concerned that the incoming Trump administration may be more hesitant to grant such authorizations, and could instead use them “as leverage or as an argument in negotiations with Russians.”
“But we will have two months prior to this probable decision. At least for now, we have this time,” Cherniev said.
The potential transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was previously reported to be one of the secret points of Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called “victory plan” which he published last month. The New York Times claimed, citing a senior US official, that the missiles were requested as part of a proposed “non-nuclear deterrence package,” given their range.
However, the NYT reported at the time that Washington had refused Kiev’s demand for Tomahawks, calling it “a totally unfeasible request.”
Moscow has suggested that Kiev’s demand for the cruise missiles is evidence of the Ukrainian leadership’s “nervousness” due to failures on the battlefield.
“The dynamics on the frontline are quite obvious. Everyone sees it well, both in our country and in Western countries. Against this background, of course, the Kiev regime is beginning to show considerable nervousness,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists last month. He added that Zelensky’s “victory plan” boiled down to “drawing Western countries completely into war up to their ears and legitimizing it.”