Trump hesitant to send Tomahawks ahead of Zelenskyy meeting

President Donald Trump is set to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House on Friday, with the U.S. leader signalling he’s not ready to agree to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.

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Zelenskyy gets his one-on-one with Trump a day after the U.S. president and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict. In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range ‘Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the U.S.-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday's call with Putin, Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600 kilometers.) “We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can't deplete our country.”