Trump plans to provide Ukraine with long -range missiles, says Vance

The United States is considering Ukraine’s demand for long-range Tomahawk missiles, said US vice-president JD Vance.

However, Vance added that President Donald Trump would take “the final determination” on this subject.

Kyiv has long been calling on its Western partners to provide it with weapons that could strike the big Russian cities far from the front line, arguing that they would help Ukraine seriously weaken the Russian military industry and end the war.

“If the cost of pursuing the war for Moscow is too high, he will be forced to start peace talks,” Deputy Minister Ivan Havryliuk told the BBC.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov played Vance’s suggestion, saying that there was “no panacea that can change the situation on the front for the kyiv regime”.

“Whether tomahawks or other missiles, they will not be able to change the dynamics,” he added.

Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500 km (1,550 miles), which would put Moscow at hand for Ukraine.

While Vance remained ambivalent about the demand for Ukraine Tomahawks in his remarks on Sunday, the American special envoy in Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, seemed to suggest that Trump had already authorized the strikes deeply in Russian territory.

Asked about Fox News if Washington had allowed kyiv to make long -term strikes in Russia in specific cases, Kellogg said: “The answer is yes, use the ability to hit deeply, there is no sanctuaries.”

The comments of Vance and Kellogg correspond to the recent change of tone of the American administration with regard to war.

After having repeatedly expressed skepticism that Ukraine could continue to stand against Russia last week, Trump said that kyiv could “win all of Ukraine in his original form” – a change that would even have surprised the Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Trump is known to have been irritated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surface desire to discuss the end of the war against the reality of the persistent bombing of Moscow in Ukrainian cities.

On Sunday, a massive 12 -hour strike involving hundreds of drones and nearly 50 missiles left four people in kyiv and at least 70 injured.

Ukraine’s havryliuk said BBC Russia only increased the intensity and gravity of its air attacks.

To protect its sky from ballistic missiles, kyiv has asked its Western partners at least 10 units of patriotic airline defense systems that can detect and intercept missiles coming in the opposite direction.

When asked if the Patriot systems that Trump had promised during the summer was to come, Havryliuk refused to be trained in detail, but said that there was “a certain movement in this direction”.

The more drones and missiles are driven by Russia, the more difficult for Ukraine to intercept them.

Earlier this month, Moscow pulled a record number of more than 800 drones and missiles – the highest since the start of the large -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Inevitably, during these large -scale attacks, the interception rate drops.

Of the hundreds of drones used during the attack on Sunday, 31 managed to reach their targets. According to President Zelensky, the majority were residential buildings and civil facilities such as a cardiology center in kyiv.

In addition to being more frequent and more intense, air attacks also become more dangerous because Moscow uses new and more advanced drones to unravel Ukraine’s air defense systems, Havryliuk said.

When Iranian manufacturing Shahed drones were used for the first time in 2023, “they were easy to blur by using our electronic war systems,” he said.

“Today, they use 16 -channel antennas to go through our scrambling areas.”

Havryliuk also thinks they would be a way for Ukraine to stop Russian drones before reaching the EU countries.

“The strengthening of our air defense system is an investment in the security of all Europe,” he said, referring to the recent foray into Russian drones in Polish airspace.

He added that it would disrupt “Putin’s plans to constantly scare Europe”.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration approved a new mechanism that sees European allies buying American manufacturing weapons for Ukraine. So far, several European countries and Canada have collectively promised $ 2 billion (1.5 billion pounds sterling).

Although some of the weapons purchased as part of the program has already arrived in Ukraine, said Havryliuk, the process is slower than before.

Time is a precious goods in Ukraine, and in the past three and a half years of war, kyiv has developed a flourishing defense industry, considerably increasing its production of drones, artillery shells, artillery systems and armored vehicles.

Ukraine is now producing almost 100% of first -person (FPV) views of view that it needs and up to 40% of first -line demand for other weapons, said Havryliuk.

Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine would continue to focus on drones and missiles produced in the country with long -range capacities.

But until it can intensify the production of weapons, kyiv will remain largely dependent on its allies to provide the air defense systems it needs.

Ukraine hopes that better protection of its cities with air defense systems combined with long -range weapons capable of reaching Russian targets will help bring Moscow to the negotiation table.

“It is only with our partners that we can stop Russian terror in heaven,” said Havryliuk.