US president said ‘we need Tomahawks and a lot of other things’ as he meets Zelenskyy; fraud sentence of disgraced serial fabulist Santos commuted – key US politics stories from Friday 17 October at a glance
Donald Trump has played down hopes that he will supply Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, saying during a White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the US may need them for a future conflict.
Responding to a question on whether the US would send the cruise missiles requested by Ukraine, Trump said: “We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other things that we’ve been sending over the last four years to Ukraine.
“It’s not easy for us to give [Ukraine] … massive numbers of very powerful weapons,” he said. “Hopefully they won’t need it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”
Trump’s doubtful tone on the cruise missiles follows a surprise phone call with Vladimir Putin on Friday during which the Russian leader told Trump that supplying the Tomahawks would damage US-Russian relations. His position on supplying Ukraine with weapons has changed a number of times since he returned to office in January, often following negotiations with Putin or European backers of Ukraine.
