WASHINGTON, DC – US President Donald Trump said Sunday (Monday, Manila time) he may warn Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Ukraine could get Tomahawk cruise missiles if Moscow does not end its invasion.
Trump has been mulling potential supplies of the long-range missiles to Kyiv via European allies since his meeting with Putin in Alaska in August failed to produce a peace deal.
“I might talk to him. I might say, ‘look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks,’” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if he would raise the subject with Putin himself.
The US leader said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked for Tomahawks when they were discussing a fresh supply of weapons for Kyiv in a call on Saturday.
“Tomahawks are a new step of aggression,” added Trump, who was traveling to Israel and Egypt to push for a long-term Gaza peace deal.
“Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.”
Putin has previously warned against supplying Kyiv with Tomahawks, saying it would be a major escalation and affect relations between Washington and Moscow.
Trump has repeatedly said that the Ukraine war, now in its fourth year, is the toughest of a number of conflicts that he claims to have solved since his return to power in January.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of pro-Western Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine said Monday it was introducing restrictions on energy consumption in at least seven regions following a series of recent Russian aerial attacks on power facilities.
“Due to the complicated situation in Ukraine’s Unified Energy System caused by previous Russian strikes, emergency power outages were implemented” across seven regions, the energy ministry said on social media. AFP
It mainly listed territories in the centre and east of the country, including the Donetsk region where officials have urged civilians to leave over targeted attacks on the grid.
The ministry added that only industrial consumers would be subject to restrictions in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, which is partially occupied by Russian forces and is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Only partial restrictions would be imposed in the Kirovograd region, it added.
The Kremlin has escalated aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities and its rail network over recent weeks, repeating its targeted bombing campaign from the previous three winters that left millions without heating in frigid temperatures.
Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, Moscow usually claims after such attacks that it targeted energy facilities that support the Ukrainian military.
The attacks have forced energy officials to impose scheduled power outages for the civilian population to reduce pressure on the grid.
In related developments, in Paris, drones flying over airports, commercial sites and other sensitive infrastructure in Europe is a growing phenomenon which EU leaders blame on Russia, and preventing the disruption they cause will prove a tough technical challenge, observers say.
Detecting the drones, making them non-operational by jamming them, or even shooting them down, are all complex and hazardous tasks. And while Russian involvement is suspected, it is difficult to prove.
Concerns are growing that such disruptions could be part of Russian hybrid war tactics three-and-a-half years into its invasion of Ukraine, as most European countries double down on their support for Kyiv including by delivering military hardware.
In early October, drones spotted over the German city of Munich twice shuttered the city’s airport, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying “our suspicion is that Russia is behind most of these drone flights”.
This followed similar incidents around airports in the Norwegian capital Oslo, Copenhagen and other Danish cities.
In France, several drones were spotted flying over the military base of Mourmelon-le-Grand in the northeast of the country earlier this week, the French military told AFP.
The drones were small and not piloted by French military personnel, the regional branch of the army said, describing the incident as “exceptional.”
European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said the incidents amounted to a “coherent and escalating campaign”.
“Two incidents are coincidence, but three, five, 10 — this is a deliberate and targeted grey-zone campaign against Europe, and Europe must respond,” she told EU lawmakers on Wednesday.
French forces earlier this month boarded a tanker off western France that has been linked to the mysterious drone flights.
Its captain and first mate were detained but later released, and the vessel was able to head towards the Suez Canal.
“At this stage, it’s just to annoy us, it’s part of the Russians’ displays of hostility. They’re trying to humiliate us,” said a French security source, requesting not to be named.
The source emphasised that it was difficult to prove Moscow’s involvement.
They said France has seen increased drone overflights of military installations, industrial sites and other sensitive locations over the past few weeks, but authorities are unsure who is controlling them.
In some cases, there could be other explanations.
At Mourmelon, a vast military site, “we could very well have a father who buys a Chinese drone that doesn’t include the ‘no-fly zone’ in its system, who doesn’t read the instructions and goes to the nearby forest for the weekend and ends up in the middle of a prohibited zone”, said Thierry Berthier, scientific director of the European professional federation for security drones,
Whatever their origin, countering the drones is not going to be easy.
There are many sites that need to be protected — not just civilian airports, but also military sites, sensitive industries such as those involved in European support for Ukraine, and power plants.
Jamming is an effective but potentially fraught measure in populated areas. “You risk jamming a lot of things,” Berthier warned.
A drone can be shot down or intercepted with another drone, but this is risky. At the end of September, the Danish authorities decided not to shoot them down for the safety of civilians.
There are also legal constraints.
In France, “only a government agency can neutralize a drone,” said the security source, meaning that a private company would not be allowed to disable a drone by jamming it.
In Germany, the government must clear up a legal limbo to allow the police to shoot down threatening drones.
Lorenzo, a French naval sailor on an exercise in the Mediterranean who did not give his last name in line with French military custom, told AFP it was “very difficult” to shoot down a drone.
He said this as he stood behind his 12.7-calibre machine gun which has a range of 900 metres (2,950 feet) and fires 500 rounds per minute.
While most European countries strongly support Ukraine, leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron have consistently stressed they are not a “belligerent” party in the conflict.
“We are no longer completely in peacetime because we are both in peacetime and not far from confrontation,” Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, chief of staff of the French Navy, said Wednesday, complaining of obstacles preventing the deployment of defense resources.
“At some point, (we have to ask,) are we defending or not?” AFP
