Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he will meet US president Donald Trump in Washington on Friday, where he said the two would discuss strengthening Kyiv’s defensive and strike capabilities.
Senior Ukrainian officials are flying to Washington before the meeting as Russia warned US president Donald Trump that a decision to give Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv could “end badly” for him.
Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko, national security council chief Rustem Umerov and Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will visit the US amid concerns for Ukraine’s power grid and air defences as Russia intensifies missile and drone strikes on its energy infrastructure in advance of winter.
Talks will focus on “strengthening our air defence and strike capabilities ... strengthening [energy] resilience before winter” and ways to tighten sanctions to put “new pressure on the aggressor,” Mr Yermak said on Monday.
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Mr Zelenskiy said on Sunday he had held “very productive” talks by phone with Mr Trump for the second time in two days. He has asked the US to provide more air defence systems, support for Ukraine’s power grid and Tomahawk cruise missiles which, with a range of 2,500km, could strike most of European Russia.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv yesterday, he said: “Frankly, I’ve already shared our vision with Trump... but some of these things are not for a phone conversation, so we’ll meet.”
Mr Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s refusal to hold peace talks. On Sunday he said: “I might say look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks ... We may not, but we may do it.”
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Mr Trump was “making a threat for the hundred-and-first time” and warned that provision of Tomahawks “could end badly for everyone. And most of all, for Trump himself.”
Mr Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, said it had been explained “a hundred times in terms comprehensible even to the old stars-and-stripes guy” that Russia could not tell whether a Tomahawk flying towards its territory was equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead.
“How should Russia respond? Exactly!” he added, appearing to suggest that Moscow’s response could be nuclear. He also claimed that only US servicemen, not Ukrainian, would be able to launch Tomahawks at Russian targets.
The Kremlin has repeatedly used the threat of nuclear escalation to discourage western states from helping Ukraine. Mr Trump said last week that he would want to know how Kyiv intended to use Tomahawks, and Mr Zelenskiy has insisted they would only be fired at military targets.
The US is reportedly providing intelligence to Kyiv to assist its campaign of strikes against Russian oil refineries, which aims to disrupt Russia’s military logistics, cut its oil revenue and exacerbate fuel shortages and price increases.
“We know that Russia’s military economy is already weak, it will become weaker. Inflation is over 20 per cent, monetary reserves are decreasing, and growth is approaching zero. So, we can assume that time was on Russia’s side for a while, but now it’s on Ukraine’s side,” the EU’s most senior representative on foreign affairs Kaja Kallas said in Kyiv on Monday.
She also accused Russia of “playing with fire” by sending drones and military aircraft into the airspace of EU and Nato states in eastern Europe. Moscow denies responsibility for the incidents.
“Europe faces an extraordinary surge of hybrid attacks. Every time a Russian drone or plane violates our airspace, there is a risk of escalation, unintended or not. Russia is gambling with war, and we are moving beyond the realms of hypothetical,” she said.
Ms Kallas is a former prime minister of Estonia, where a border road that loops through Russia has been closed for several days after increased military activity on the Russian side of the frontier last Friday. Estonian officials said the situation was calm and posed no immediate security threat to the country.
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