Ukraine war latest: Trump says won’t sell Tomahawks to Kyiv for now

A senior Nato military official has said the alliance “will stand with Ukraine up to the day” they will sit around a table for “long-lasting peace”.

Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of Nato’s military committee, told the BBC that the Ukraine will not be ruled by a Moscow-friendly government and the Russian president will not win in his quest. “They will not get a friendly or puppet government like in Belarus. Putin will not succeed.”

From an operational point of view, Admiral Dragone said he considered the Russia-Ukraine war was bogged down, and “it was almost time to sit and talk because it’s a waste of lives”.

He also described the war as a strategic failure for Putin despite recent slow gains by the Russian forces on the battlefield.

The top official also said European nations were prepared to keep going ahead with supporting Ukraine’s defence.

Russian air attacks on Ukraine killed two people overnight and left tens of thousands more – and the entire eastern Donetsk region – without power, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.

Moscow has stepped up missile and drone strikes on Ukraine as winter approaches, triggering outages and forcing emergency crews to quickly repair damage and manage rolling blackouts.

The two deaths were reported in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, where officials said cargo trucks had come under attack, while nearly 60,000 residents in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region lost power, local authorities said.

All of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Russia is pressing forward on the battlefield, was also facing emergency power outages after attacks on energy infrastructure, its governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Ukrainian military chief has said his troops were battling “multi-thousand” enemy forces in key frontline town Pokrovsk in the Donetsk oblast.

Oleksandr Syrskyi said elite special forces had been deployed to defend key supply lines facing Russian fire.

Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, since mid-2024 in its campaign to control the entirety of Donetsk, a Ukrainian province it claims to have annexed.

The city, home to 70,000 people before the war, has been all but completely destroyed and depopulated.

Capturing Pokrovsk would be the most important Russian territorial gain inside Ukraine since Moscow took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024 after one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Kyiv said this week it had landed a helicopter with a team of special forces in Pokrovsk in a mission to halt the Russian advance. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday its troops had killed all 11 members of that Ukrainian special forces team.

A Ukrainian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that the special forces had been killed and said the operation was continuing.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is creating “significant risks” to the US economy and is costing American firms billions in lost opportunities, a report by influential economists has warned.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity paper by Daniel J. Mitchell and Robert O’Quinn also claims that the continuation of the conflict threatens the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

Russia and China want to end this so-called “exorbitant privilege” that sees most countries use the dollar for international trade and are using the war and trade tensions to undermine America’s position, the report argues.

The analysis also highlights a staggering $520bn opportunity for American firms in rebuilding Ukraine, alongside reclaiming $100bn in lost energy ventures like ExxonMobil’s Arctic projects.

Donald Trump said for now, he is not considering a deal that would allow Ukraine to obtain long-range Tomahawk missiles for use against Russia.

Without promising, Trump has been okay with the US to sell Tomahawks to Nato nations that would transfer them to Ukraine, saying he does not want to escalate the war.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has long requested the missiles, but the Kremlin has warned against any provision of Tomahawks to Ukraine.

“No, not really,” Trump told reporters as he flew to Washington from Palm Beach, Florida, when asked whether he was considering a deal to sell the missiles. He added, however, that he could change his mind.

His latest comments to reporters aboard Air Force One indicate that he remains reluctant.

Trump and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte discussed the Tomahawk idea when they met at the White House on 22 October. Rutte said on Friday that the issue was under review and that it was up to the United States to decide.

Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500km (1,550 miles), long enough to strike deep inside Russia, including Moscow.

Kyiv is preparing for new drone and long-range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure that could lead to widespread blackouts in Russia, Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s drone systems forces, said yesterday.

The attacks would force Russian regions to adapt to disruptions in power supply, Brovdi wrote on Facebook.

“Blackouts are not scary. They’re just a bit inconvenient… The birds of the drone systems forces, together with other components of Ukraine’s deep strike capabilities, promise you a rapid, if somewhat forced, adaptation,” he said, referring to drones as “free Ukrainian birds”.

The drone force commander said Russia would increasingly face fuel shortages as gas and oil reserves were “burning fast”.

President Donald Trump said he was not really considering giving Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles.

Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One if he was not considering providing the weapons to Ukraine, Trump responded: “No, not really.”

In October, Trump said he would provide Kyiv with Tomahawks. He told reporters on Air Force One “We’ll see… I may”. The missiles would be “a new step of aggression” in Ukraine’s war with Russia, he said.