Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Oct. 5 that Moscow’s relationship with Washington would be destroyed if the United States were to supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for long-range strikes deep into Russian territory.
“This will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations,” Putin said in a video clip released on Oct. 5 by Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin.
Less than two months after Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump at a summit in Alaska, peace between Moscow and Kyiv looks even further out of grasp, as Russia has sent forces advancing into Ukraine and drones allegedly flying into NATO airspace while the United States takes a stronger stance on participating in deep strikes into its former Cold War nemesis.
Trump has referred to Russia as a “paper tiger” because of its inability to overtake Ukraine following its 2022 invasion, and he has said that he is disappointed with Putin for not agreeing to peace. Putin has, in turn, cast NATO as a paper tiger for failing to stop Russia’s advance into Ukraine.
“We’re looking at it. We’re certainly looking at a number of requests from the Europeans,” Vance told Fox News in an interview aired on Sept. 28.
Trump would make the “final determination” on whether to grant Ukraine’s request for the weapons, which would be paid for by European nations, Vance said.
“What the president is going to do is [based on] what’s in the best interest of the United States of America,” he said. “That’s the driving light between his foreign policy decisions, between his defense policy decisions, and that will be the same heuristic that we apply to how we answer this question about Tomahawks.”
At the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was analyzing Vance’s comments but that Tomahawks would not be a game changer in the war.
“Even if this happens, there’s no panacea that can change the situation on the front for the Kyiv regime right now,” he said. “There’s no magic weapon. And whether it’s Tomahawks or other missiles, they won’t be able to change the dynamic.”
U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg also indicated that Trump had approved Ukraine to conduct long-range strikes into Russian territory.
Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of 1,550 miles, which means the Kremlin and all of European Russia would be within target if Ukraine were to have access to the missiles.
On Oct. 2, Putin said direct participation of U.S. military personnel would be required for Ukraine to use Tomahawks and that any supply of them to Kyiv would be considered an escalation.
“This will mean a completely new, qualitatively new stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the United States,” Putin said, adding that Tomahawks could hurt Russia but that Moscow would simply shoot them down and bolster its air defenses.
