As U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House for high-stakes talks on Friday, the main question remained whether the U.S. will supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.

Doing so would give Ukraine the ability to strike deep inside Russia for the first time, and would mark a major escalation in the Russia-Ukraine war.

As Trump began a working lunch with Zelenskyy, he was asked about the consequences of such a move. Trump acknowledged “a lot of bad things could happen” if they are deployed. “They’re an amazing weapon. Tomahawks are a big deal.”

‘Hopefully they won’t need it,’ Trump says when asked about Tomahawk missiles and Ukraine

However, Trump also hinted that he has so far made no commitment. “Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”

Here are some facts on the missile and what role it could play in the war.

What is a Tomahawk?

It’s a long-range missile that has a range of at least 1,600 kilometres, and in some cases can be extended to 2,400 kilometres. It flies low to the ground, making it hard for defence systems to detect, and can be guided to precise targets.

By some estimates, the U.S. has thousands of them but indications are that the supply is dwindling. Since last year, the U.S. has used at least 135 Tomahawks (and possibly more) in fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. At the same time, the Pentagon only ordered 22 new ones in 2024, and no requests for any new ones have been made in this year’s budget.

If it were to happen, the U.S. would sell the missiles to European partners, who would then donate them to Ukraine. But it’s not clear how many the U.S. would be willing to part with.

It’s also unclear exactly how the missiles would be launched. Currently, they take off almost exclusively from ships or submarines, and Ukraine doesn’t possess a Navy with ships capable of carrying the 20-foot-long missile. There is no way to launch them from the ground.

Why does Ukraine want Tomahawks?

Ukraine has long expressed the desire to be able to hit targets far inside Russia. But the U.S. and European allies have also been nervous about the idea, because it would provoke Russia, which has repeatedly warned NATO countries not to turn this into a wider conflict.

Trump himself alluded to that yesterday. He said when he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone this week, he asked the Russian leader if it would be OK, “if I gave a couple thousand Tomahawks to your opposition? He didn’t like the idea.”

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the Russian president emphasized to Trump that providing Ukraine with Tomahawks would “inflict significant damage to the relations between our countries.”

Currently, Ukraine can’t strike far into Russia. It has the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, a missile with a range of about 300 kilometres that the Biden administration agreed to supply. Ukraine’s drones have even more limited ranges than that.

Today at the White House, Zelenskyy said, “We have drones. We don’t have Tomahawks. That’s why we need them.”

Contrast that with Russia, which has repeatedly hit cities and other targets in Ukraine since the start of the war with long range missiles as well as drones.

What would Tomahawks hit?

Ukraine and Russia don’t generally discuss specific strategic plans in public ahead of time, but one possible target is energy infrastructure.

Since the summer, Ukraine has been hitting Russian energy facilities with increased intensity. Drone strikes in August repeatedly targeted oil refineries and fuel storage facilities. Over the course of the month, Ukraine attacked oil infrastructure at least 12 times, according to media reports. Of those attacks, at least 10 were targeting sites in the heavily populated region south of Moscow and east of Ukraine.

These attacks damaged, but in most cases did not destroy the facilities. But it was enough that it slowed refinery activity noticeably.

Russia is feeling it

As a result, the price of gasoline in some areas of Russia shot up 50 per cent compared to a year earlier. Demand by early September had soared as farmers needed fuel for harvesting, and others hit the road for late-summer vacations.

Then some gas stations started running dry, while others were rationing, particularly in the more remote regions of Russia’s far east.

At the same time, the effect shouldn’t be overstated. Moscow has been spared the price hikes because it is supplied from major refineries that sit not far from the city, and haven’t been attacked.

It’s not known if Ukraine is eyeing facilities like that when asking for Tomahawk missiles. If so, it would mark a major escalation.