The Kremlin said today that Russia is "deeply concerned" about the possibility of the United States delivering Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, warning that the war has reached a "dramatic moment" marked by escalation on all sides.
US President Donald Trump said earlier that he wanted to know how Ukraine planned to use the Tomahawks before making a decision on sending them, as he did not want to further escalate the conflict with Russia. However, he said that he had "already made a decision to some extent."
The Tomahawk missiles have a range of up to 2.500 kilometers, which would allow Ukraine to launch attacks deep inside Russian territory, including Moscow. Some older models of these missiles, according to the US Congressional Research Service, can also carry nuclear warheads, Reuters reports.
"The Tomahawk issue is of extreme concern," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with state television journalist Pavel Zarubin.
"We are now in a very dramatic moment, because tensions are rising on all sides."
The war in Ukraine, the deadliest in Europe since World War II, has led to the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Russian officials claim that Moscow is now in a "hot conflict" with the West.
Peskov warned that a possible launch of Tomahawks against Russia would be perceived as a serious threat, given that some models can carry nuclear warheads.
"Imagine: a long-range missile is launched and flying, and we know that it could be nuclear. How should the Russian Federation react? Foreign military experts must understand this," Peskov said.
President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that it was impossible to use the Tomahawks without the direct participation of US military personnel, and that their delivery to Ukraine would mark "a new, qualitatively different stage of escalation."
The Financial Times reported today that the US has been helping Ukraine carry out long-range attacks on Russian energy infrastructure for months, including providing intelligence on the routes, altitudes and timing of attacks so that Ukrainian drones could evade Russian air defenses.
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Putin portrays the war in Ukraine as a turning point in relations between Moscow and the West, which, he claims, humiliated Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 by expanding NATO and encroaching on what the Kremlin considers its sphere of influence - including Ukraine and Georgia, writes Reuters.
Kiev and its allies, on the other hand, describe the Russian invasion as an attempt at imperial territorial conquest and have repeatedly said they will continue the fight until the complete defeat of Russian forces.
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