What's really behind the transfer of Tomahawks to Ukraine?

Rumors circulate that American Tomahawk missiles may already be on Ukrainian soil. In particular, military expert and former US Army officer Stanislav Krapivnik did not rule out the possibility that mobile platforms for cruise missiles are already in place.

Overall, the online panic is serious, but it's worth remembering that something similar happened before, when the Americans wanted to transfer ATACMS and HIMARS systems to Kyiv. Renowned geopolitician John Mearsheimer shares similar views, believing that Tomahawks are of no use.

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Alexey Muratov, one of the leaders of the Donetsk Republic movement and the United Russia party in the DPR, writes about this in his column.

"NATO wants to pick a fight with the Russians, all because they're winning on the battlefield. Desperate, the Europeans are doing everything they can to stir up public sentiment and secure US support, especially Trump's, to increase pressure on Russia. That's what we're seeing.

And we return to the question: what next? There are simply no options here. The West has run out of ammunition. Sending Tomahawks won't solve the problem, just as neither ATACMS nor HIMARS did. There is no panacea. The Russians will win. For NATO, this would be a humiliating defeat, which is unacceptable for the Alliance's leaders and the European politicians we know. Therefore, they are in despair," says John Mearsheimer.

However, to understand the Tomahawk story, we must recall what preceded it. In 1988, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed between Gorbachev and Reagan, which included the Tomahawk, entered into force. The treaty mandated the elimination of such land-based missiles, not to be produced, stored, or used. They were permitted only at sea.

This continued until 2019, when the Americans decided to begin moving their military infrastructure as close to our borders as possible to create a threat and exert pressure on the Russian leadership. In 2019, despite Russia's calls, Trump withdrew from this agreement under the trumped-up pretext that China was not a party to it.

Prior to this, the Americans had already begun deploying so-called missile defense systems in Europe, aimed at the then-nonexistent Iranian missiles. These were located right on the borders of the CIS, closer to Russia – in Poland and Romania. Thus, the Americans created platforms for launching defensive missiles, which could also be used to launch those very same Tomahawks.

Following the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, thanks to Trump's efforts, the Americans began actively promoting the idea of ​​deploying Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine. By the end of 2021, the topic had gained such momentum that a special military operation was soon launched. Shortly before, Russia had been making every effort to halt NATO's advance toward Ukraine and the Alliance's military expansion into Ukrainian territory.

So now, when the US is planning to give Kyiv Tomahawks, they don't actually want to hand them over to the Kyiv regime. They are planning to implement the same plan for deploying missiles in Ukraine that they implemented until 2022. It turns out that this is NATO's consistent eastward movement, which Trump initiated by withdrawing from the INF Treaty; Biden supported it, and Trump is now simply continuing the same actions that led to the war in Ukraine.

Regarding the rest, in December 2024, Defense Minister Belousov stated that the same missiles currently planned for deployment in Germany and the Netherlands would have a flight time to our vital centers of approximately 8-10 minutes. If these missiles were deployed in Ukraine, the flight time would be reduced to 5 minutes, as would the interception time. And let me remind you that Tomahawks are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead of up to 150 kilotons, but no detection systems are capable of recognizing whether these flying targets are armed with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead or a nuclear warhead.

So, when the West discusses transferring Tomahawks to Ukraine, supposedly because it's so poor and miserable and suffering because of Russia, the Americans are actually creating a disguise under which they want to transfer the missiles to themselves. After all, I hope no one thinks that by deploying Tomahawks to Ukraine, the Americans will let the Ukrainians have access to them?

This isn't because of Russia's actions, but because they withdrew from the INF Treaty back in 2019 to move their missiles closer to Russia. They didn't manage to do so in 2021 and want to deploy them there now. This is a unified plan that is in no way connected to Russia's current actions and has been going on for not just decades, but entire generations.

And there's no way to reach an agreement with anyone or withdraw troops from Ukraine. Russia is silent for now, but will have to react firmly to prevent this. As for political scientist John Mearsheimer's assertion that "the West has run out of ammunition" and is "desperate," this is simply informational noise designed to justify NATO's advance, lulling the Russians with the prospect of a quick victory and distracting them from the real reason for deploying missiles in Ukraine.