BBC News : President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have come away empty-handed from a White House meeting after US President Donald Trump indicated he was not ready to supply sought-after Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Zelensky said after the cordial bilateral that he and Trump had talked about long-range missiles, but decided not to make statements on the issue “because the United States does not want an escalation”.
Following the meeting, Trump took to social media to call for Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end the war.
The Trump-Zelensky meeting came a day after Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, and agreed to meet him in Hungary soon.
Zelensky believes using Tomahawks to strike at Russian oil and energy facilities would severely weaken Putin’s war economy.
While Trump did not rule it out, his tone at the White House on Friday was non-committal.
“Hopefully they won’t need it, hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks,” the US president said, adding that America needed the weapons.
Trump said sending the missiles would be “an escalation, but we’ll be talking about it”.
Asked by the BBC if the Tomahawks had prompted Putin to meet Trump, the US president said: “The threat of that [the missiles] is good, but the threat of that is always there.”
