“President Donald Trump said that the Russian president would meet a bad end if he does not resolve the Ukraine conflict. If the ‘architect of peace’ is referring to the Tomahawk missiles, that statement is inaccurate. Transferring that missile type would have negative consequences for everyone, especially for Trump,” Medvedev said today.
He noted that it is impossible to distinguish a Tomahawk armed with a conventional warhead from one carrying a nuclear warhead in flight, and warned that Russia would regard the United States — not Ukraine — as the party that fired them. “How will Russia respond? Exactly in that way,” he added, apparently alluding to the possibility of a nuclear retaliation. The Russian official expressed the hope that the U.S. president’s remarks were no more than “empty threats,” similar to earlier comments about moving nuclear submarines closer to Russia.
U.S. officials have not commented.
Medvedev’s remarks followed President Trump’s statement that Washington would not directly transfer Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv but raised the option of selling the missiles to NATO so the alliance could supply them to Ukraine.
“I might tell Mr. Putin that if the war does not end, we will leave open the possibility of transferring Tomahawk missiles. That could happen, or it might not. Would Russia want Tomahawks aimed at them? I don’t think so,” Trump said.
The Tomahawk is a subsonic cruise missile produced by RTX, designed for precise strikes against land targets. Its warheads typically weigh 400–450 kg and can be fitted with high-explosive or cluster munitions to destroy hardened targets or disable large amounts of enemy materiel.
Some Tomahawk variants were once fitted with nuclear warheads with yields up to the equivalent of 200,000 tons of TNT, but those versions have been retired. Those variants had ranges of 1,600–2,500 km depending on the model, meaning they could reach targets across the European portion of Russia — including Moscow — if launched from Ukraine.
Earlier this month, President Putin said that supplying Tomahawk or similar missiles to Kyiv would represent “a new stage of escalation,” arguing that Ukraine’s armed forces could not operate such sophisticated weapons without direct involvement from U.S. personnel. Putin also said Russia would strengthen its air defenses if the U.S. supplied Tomahawks to Ukraine.
One U.S. official and three anonymous sources told reporters that the idea of transferring Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was impractical, because most of the missiles are currently assigned to the U.S. Navy and are used for other purposes.