President Trump on Wednesday said he didn’t give Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine because it would take too long to train them to use them.
He said it would take “a minimum of six months, usually a year” to learn how to use the long-range missiles.
“They’re highly complex, so the only way a Tomahawk is going to be shot is if we shot it, and we’re not going to do that,” he said in the Oval Office while meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “But there is a tremendous learning curve with a Tomahawk. It’s a very powerful weapon, very accurate weapon, and maybe that’s what makes it so complex.”
He said the U.S. will not be teaching other people how to use them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington Friday to request U.S.-made Tomahawks from Mr. Trump as part of a trade for Ukrainian drones, but the Ukrainian leader left empty-handed.
In the Oval Office with Mr. Rutte, Mr. Trump also railed against a Wall Street Journal report published earlier Wednesday that said the U.S. lifted key restrictions on Ukraine’s use of British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
“It said that I gave Ukraine permission to shoot missiles deep into Russia. I didn’t do that. Second of all, they’re not using our missiles. They’re using, I think, European missiles, or from someplace, but they’re not using ours,” he said. “And what they do, I don’t control that, but I do control our missiles. They’re not shooting our missiles, and it was a fake story.”
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Tuesday that a “massive combined missile-aircraft strike was carried out, including with air-launched Storm Shadow missiles, which overcame the Russian air defense system.”
It said it struck the Bryansk Chemical Plant.
