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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Vladimir Zelensky arrived more than thirty minutes late for lunch at the White House on Friday afternoon. The Ukrainian delegation, which included Andrei Yermak, was already too late to dissuade President Donald Trump (lead image) from backing down on his threat to send Tomahawk missiles through NATO to Ukraine for launching at Russian targets deep inside the country.
“We’ll be talking about that,” Trump replied [3] to a Ukrainian reporter at the lunch table press conference. “That’s why we are here…Fair question, exactly as he [Zelensky] told you to say it. But we’re going to be talking about it.”
Trump then told [3] the press he foreshadows a delay in the decision on the missiles in order for a new round of negotiations to take place. “We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other things we’ve been sending over the last four years…Hopefully, they [Ukraine] won’t need it. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”
Trump has agreed to Putin’s negotiating offer of the day before.
He has also accepted [3] Putin’s refusal to accept Zelensky and Trump in a troika summit meeting together. “Most likely it will be a double meeting…we’ll be involved in threes but it may be separated.”
Trump began covering his retreat on the eve of Zelensky’s arrival, when a reporter asked [4] the President about his telephone call with Putin: “What did you tell them about the Tomahawks? Did you discuss the Tomahawk missiles?” Trump replied: “Well, we talked about it a little bit, didn’t say much, but I do say to you, you know, we need Tomahawks for the United States of America too. We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete for our country. So, you know, they’re very vital, they’re very powerful. They’re very accurate, they’re very good, but we need them too. So, I don’t know what we can do about that.”
In Moscow Russian officials said that in the telephone conversation Putin had issued a counterattack threat, warning the Tomahawks and American crews operating them would be a target if they crossed the border. Putin also proposed to let their officials, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, negotiate next week. If they agreed, then Putin and Trump would hold a fresh summit meeting in Budapest [5].
Emphasizing the counterattack, according to the readout of the telephone call from Yury Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs assistant, Putin told [6] Trump: “The Russian Armed Forces hold full strategic initiative along the entire line of contact.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told [7] reporters: “Our military knows what to do, and they possess the strength and all the necessary resources. Everything will certainly be done to ensure, first, national security, and second, our country’s interests,”
Following public reporting of the call, a source reflecting General Staff thinking commented: “The Tomahawks will be blown up in transit, hit at their launch sites, or shot down in flight. Of course, it will be another red line crossed, but I think Putin’s pen is out of ink at this point.”
“We’re not losing people”, Trump said [3] across the table from Zelensky. “We’re not spending money. We’re getting paid for the ammunition and missiles and everything else we are sending… That’s not what we’re in it for. We’re in it to save thousands of lives…that’s why we’re in it…I love solving wars. You wanna to know why. I like stopping people being killed. And I’ve saved millions and millions of lives. And I think we’re going to have success with this war.” Trump was conceding the risk of US casualties in the Ukraine is deterring his decision on the Tomahawks.
The day before, Trump had tried [4] a smokescreen for what had been said in the conversation with Putin: “I did actually say, would you mind if I gave a couple of thousand Tomahawks to your opposition? I did say that to him. I said it just that way. He didn’t like the idea. He really didn’t like the idea. No, I said it that way. You have to be a little bit light-hearted sometimes, but no, he doesn’t want Tom — Tomahawk is a vicious weapon. It’s a vicious offensive of incredibly destructive weapon. Nobody wants Tomahawks shot at him.”
Watch the 37-minute lunch table press conference [3]. The verbatim transcript can be read here [8].
[9]On the US side, to left of President Trump Marco Rubio, Peter Hegseth, and Steven Witkoff. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz8nYP6mE10 [3]
As the press conference concluded [3], Trump was asked if he suspected Putin of playing for time. “Yeah I am. But, you know, I’ve been played all my life by the best of them. And I came out really well. So it’s possible, yeah, a little time. It’s alright. I think I’m pretty good at this stuff…I think he wants to make a deal.”
Trump was asked to respond to the proposal for a “Putin-Trump” tunnel across the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. The plan was tweeted by the Kremlin negotiator of wealth transfers with the US, Kirill Dmitriev [10]. In Dmitriev’s text, he appealed to Elon Musk to lobby Trump for the scheme, claiming that with technology from Musk’s Boring Company, the costs of such a project could be reduced from more than $65 billion to less than $8 billion.
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[12]Source: https://x.com/kadmitriev/status/1978879906424447414 [13] and https://www.ft.com/content/d6c0f603-c04e-4751-944d-63b7db38ef8e [14] “
According to the Financial Times report, “The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump replied: “I just heard about that one. We’ll have to think about that.”