Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants Tomahawk missiles for the war against the Russian invasion.
US President Donald Trump, turning his attention to Moscow's assault on Ukraine after a successful diplomatic push in the Middle East, says the United States might provide them.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has stonewalled efforts to end the full-scale conflict he launched in 2022, is warning against an escalation.
Here's what to watch when Trump hosts Zelenskyy in Washington on October 17.
Tomahawks…
As the full-scale invasion nears the four-year mark, Ukraine is seeking US-made Tomahawk missiles to weaken Russia's war effort by striking oil and energy facilities deep inside its territory.
Here Is What Tomahawk Missiles Could Do For Ukraine
![A submarine-launched Tomahawk hits a target on San Clemente Island, a US Navy training and weapons-testing site off the Southern California coast, during a test in November 1998.<br><br>During a phone call in early July, President Trump<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b66f03b5-e295-4f8c-92ba-516a527d588c" class="wsw__a" dir="ltr"><strong>reportedly asked</strong></a> Zelenskyy, “Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? [...] Can you hit St. Petersburg too?” The Ukrainian president is reported to have replied: “Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons.” On October 6, Trump indicated he was close to making a decision on allowing Kyiv access to Tomahawks but told reporters he would "ask some questions," about Ukraine's plans for the weapon, adding "I'm not looking to escalate that war."](https://gdb.rferl.org/a036e9d4-3ac5-4f2d-9386-08ddc37e21a1_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
Trump has said the United States might provide the cruise missiles, which have a range of 1,250 to 2,500 kilometers, but he has not announced a decision and had suggested that he might discuss the matter with Putin before making one.
"I might say, 'Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I may send [Ukraine] Tomahawks.' Russia doesn't need that. I think it is appropriate to bring that up," Trump, who has voiced frustration with Russia's refusal to halt its war against Ukraine, told reporters on October 12.
The subject did come up in a phone call on October 16: Putin told Trump that providing Ukraine with the missiles would deliver a "substantial" blow to US-Russian ties and the chances for peace in Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said.
After the call, Trump suggested that US needs would complicate any effort to supply Tomahawks to Ukraine.
"We need Tomahawks for the United States of America, too," he told reporters. "We have a lot of them, but we need them. We can't deplete for our country.... So I don't know what we can do about that."
Trump is hoping to extend the momentum from the US-brokered Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal and move closer to ending Europe's worst conflict since World War II.
Analysts say Tomahawks on their own would be unlikely to be a game-changer, but could give Kyiv's campaign of strikes deep inside Russia a significant boost.
The war has shown that "there's no single weapons platform or munition that can serve as a silver bullet," Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the US-based Hudson Institute, told RFE/RL in e-mailed comments.
"However, the Tomahawks would have a practical impact on the battlefield by disrupting Russian defense manufacturing and logistics far behind the front lines," he said. "They would also have a symbolic impact, demonstrating that President Trump does, in fact, have the resolve to put more pressure on Russia to bring it to the negotiating table."
If the US does provide the missiles to Ukraine, analysts say what really matters is how many -- and how fast.
"The critical question is how many the United States will [provide] to Ukraine," Mark Cancian, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a phone interview.
"Trump wants to get a deal," he said. "If he wants to put pressure on Russia, he has to figure out a way to get weapons to Ukraine quickly."
"Tomahawks could target facilities deep inside Russia, but to have a chance of successfully making it past Russian air defense systems, Ukraine would most likely need to fire several at once," Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on the Russian military, said in an e-mailed comment.
"Tomahawks add pressure, but the amount of pressure is highly contingent on when they arrive, how many numbers might be delivered, and how they are launched," she said.
Estimates of how many Tomahawks the US could provide vary. Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow and military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Navy might "only be able to spare a handful" of one variant of the missile for Ukraine. Cancian said the total figure might be a couple hundred, or up to about 1,000 if an older version is included.
Mark Galeotti, a UK-based analyst and author on Russian politics and security, said that the "relatively low numbers the US would likely be willing to offer" Ukraine would make Tomahawks more like "political symbols" than a military game-changer.
"If Trump offers them on a concrete timeline, he is signaling a distinct hardening of his position," Galeotti said in an e-mail.
Or No Tomahawks
Several senior Ukrainian officials have been in Washington this week preparing for the October 17 meeting, including Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and Zelenskyy's influential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. And Trump and Zelenskyy spoke by phone twice in two days.
With all the talk about Tomahawks, if the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting does not produce a promise to provide them it will be a setback for Kyiv.
But it's not all about the Tomahawks.
As Russia relentlessly targets its energy infrastructure ahead of winter and hits civilians in their homes, in hospitals , and on trains , Ukraine is also seeking more air-defense weapons under a program in which European countries purchase US arms for delivery to Ukraine.
Galeotti suggested Ukraine is aiming high but would be willing to settle for less. "To a degree," he said, "Zelenskyy is adopting his usual tactic of hyping one particular weapon that he knows he is unlikely to get in order to try and guilt the other into offering something else as a consolation prize."
Even without an agreement on Tomahawks, the meeting could show that Washington is not about to abandon Ukraine or push it into swift concessions -- such as ceding land to Russia, even informally -- in the name of a peace deal.
Oval Office Memories
The tone of the talks will be closely watched -- especially in Kyiv, where memories linger of a White House meeting that went badly awry for Zelenskyy in February.
Ukraine will be wary of any sign of a shift from Trump after what the US president said was a "very productive" call with Putin that produced an agreement to meet face-to-face for the first time since August.
Lucian Kim, senior Ukraine analyst at the Crisis Group, said that the prospects for a deal on Tomahawk supplies seemed diminished by the Trump-Putin call.
"Zelensky can still ask for Tomahawks, but it's hard to imagine Trump agreeing before a renewed US push to end the fighting," Kim wrote on X.
Following the February debacle, ties between Trump and Zelenskyy have been markedly more cordial, and US officials have voiced solidarity with Ukraine in comments this week -- albeit while emphasizing the major role Washington says Europe must play, and without tipping Trump's hand on the Tomahawks.
In talks with Svyrydenko, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent "reaffirmed the United States' unwavering support for Ukrainian sovereignty," the US Treasury Department said on October 14.
If the war does not end, the US and its allies will "impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression," US defense chief Pete Hegseth said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO headquarters on October 15.
Beyond weapons another key question remains: Will Trump toughen sanctions on Russia? So far, he's held back, apart from higher tariffs on India for buying Russian oil.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly urged Washington to tighten sanctions, but there has been little talk of new measures ahead of the summit.
The Russian Reaction
Moscow has loudly warned Washington not to provide Ukraine with Tomahawks, with ex-President Dmitry Medvedev issuing a veiled nuclear threat, saying it "could end badly for everyone" as Russia would not be able to tell whether a missile was conventional or nuclear.
Putin has claimed that supplying Tomahawks would draw the United States directly into the war, asserting that US personnel would need to operate any launchers -- a claim analysts including Cancian, Coffey, and Eaglen disputed.
Several analysts dismissed Medvedev's comments as saber-rattling, citing previous nuclear warnings from the once mild-mannered but now volubly hawkish ex-president, now deputy secretary of Putin's Security Council -- and from others, including Putin.
"I think their concerns are genuine but at the same time, Russia frequently uses nuclear rhetoric to influence us not to provide these systems to Ukraine -- and nuclear threats in his context are not particularly credible to me," Massicot said.
Cancian said Russia is "annoyed" at the prospect of Tomahawks but stressed "there's no question they're conventional."
He said that strikes on energy facilities are probably Ukraine's best chance at "squeezing Russia hard enough to get it to the negotiating table."
But there's no guarantee that would happen.
"This is not going to force Putin to the table," Galeotti said of potential Tomahawk deliveries. "If anything, with his drones over Europe and changing the laws to allow him to deploy reservists in the war, he is signaling that he has escalatory options, too."
"For Putin, the war in Ukraine is an existential fight about Russia's place in the world as well as his own historical legacy. Putin is indeed ready to fight 'as long as it takes' to subordinate Ukraine," Crisis Group analyst Kim told RFE/RL in e-mailed comments.
"While Russia may not have achieved any significant battlefield victories this year, the Kremlin believes it will prevail in a war of attrition accompanied by decreasing Western support," he said.
