Recently, US Tomahawk missiles have become a major topic in Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow. Donald Trump no longer rules out supplying these weapons to Ukraine if Russia refuses to reach a peaceful solution to the war.

There is a conviction in Kyiv that long-range missiles can help achieve peace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on October 12 that if the US supplied Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, they would only strike military targets in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, said the Tomahawk missiles do not pose a serious threat, although he did consider the supply of such missiles to Ukraine to be “an absolutely and qualitatively new stage in the escalation” between Washington and Moscow. His spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, stressed in an interview on Russian state television that possible Tomahawk deliveries to Ukraine are a cause for “extreme concern” in Moscow. Zelensky is expected to meet with Trump on Friday, October 17, 2025, in Washington. The Ukrainian president has revealed that the White House discussion will focus on air defense and long-range weapons.

This is what the Tomahawk looks like

A Tomahawk missile is a long-range subsonic cruise missile that is highly accurate, both strategically and tactically. It is produced in many variants, including different warheads, including nuclear ones. It can be launched from different platforms.

“The Tomahawk is quite old; its development began in the 1970s. Originally, the Americans developed it as a nuclear-armed missile in three versions: airborne (for bombers), ground-based, and sea-based,” Ukrainian military expert Konstiantyn Krivolap told DW. The missile originally had a range of up to 2,500 kilometers. When the nuclear warhead was replaced with a conventional one, it was decided that a range of 1,600 kilometers and a warhead weight of about 450 kilograms were sufficient. However, there are still missiles that can reach a distance of 2,500 kilometers, Kryvolap emphasizes.

According to Kryvolap, Ground-based Tomahawk missiles and their launch pads were eliminated following the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987.After the United States withdrew from this treaty in 2019, during Donald Trump's first term, many launch pads were restored. Kryvolap believes that what Ukraine needs now are ground-based Tomahawk missiles.

“The most important thing about this missile is its ability to fly at very low altitudes. It best applies the technical advances available for terrain scanning by a cruise missile.” It is the conventional, ie, non-nuclear, cruise missile with the longest range in the West.

Why Tomahawks Would Be a Problem for the Kremlin

Since 1983, the United States has repeatedly used Tomahawks in military operations, for example in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Andriy Kovalenko of the Center for Combating Disinformation of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine notes that long-range Tomahawk missiles successfully hit Russian air defense targets during the fighting in Syria in 2017 and 2018.

According to him, a Tomahawk flies with a complex navigation system that, once detected by radar, gives the enemy only a few seconds to react. "Russian systems then covered Syrian targets, but without success. Tomahawks are especially effective when launched in batches. Overloading air defenses increases the chances of success. Russian S-400 or Panzir systems are weak against Tomahawks," Kovalenko explains.

Experience with the Tomahawk missile and its long-range characteristics would allow the Ukrainian armed forces to hit important military targets in Russia at a distance of 1,600 kilometers, Oleh Katlov, an arms expert and editor-in-chief of the military website Defense Express, told DW.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also believes that Ukraine could use Tomahawk missiles to significantly damage or even destroy important military facilities on Russian territory, such as the Yelabuga drone factory in the Republic of Tatarstan or the Engels-2 airbase in the Saratov region. From there, Russia launches strategic bombers that fire air-to-air cruise missiles in massive combined attacks against Ukraine. In total, ISW estimates there are between 1,600 and 2,000 military targets in Russia that could be hit by Tomahawks.

Tomahawk Supplies as a Signal to Putin

If Trump were to decide to supply these weapons to Ukraine, It would be a direct consequence of Putin rejecting any peace proposals from Trump, says John E. Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center and former US ambassador to Ukraine.

"The Kremlin's hysteria about the possibility of these weapons being supplied to Ukraine shows that this is something that could influence Putin's policy," the expert explains to Deutsche Welle. Although he believes that the Tomahawk missiles would hardly decide the outcome of the war,he believes they could send a signal to Putin and encourage the Kremlin to enter into peace negotiations.