Analysts pointed to an interview Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave to Kommersant, published on Oct. 15 under the headline “Europe wants to make the conflict in Ukraine ‘Trump’s war’.” In that interview Lavrov argued that supplying U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine “would be an escalation, and a very serious one.” He claimed the move “would inflict colossal damage on prospects for normalizing relations between Russia and the U.S. and pull them further into the complete dead end the Biden administration created.”
ISW assessed that through statements like these the Kremlin is conducting a campaign of reflexive control designed to keep the United States from approving Tomahawk sales to Ukraine by threatening deterioration in U.S.–Russia ties.
The Institute for the Study of War, however, rejected Lavrov’s assertion that supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine would represent a major escalation in Russia’s war. In reality, transferring or selling Tomahawks (long-range cruise missiles) to Ukraine would simply mirror Moscow’s own use of comparable long-range cruise missiles against Ukraine.
Russia already regularly employs a wide range of long-range cruise and ballistic missiles comparable to American Tomahawks, ISW noted — including the Kh-series cruise missiles, Kalibr cruise missiles, the aeroballistic Kinzhal, and the Iskander family of tactical ballistic and cruise systems. Moscow has used these weapons in weekly and sometimes nightly strikes against Ukraine, with many of them in use since 2022 and the Iskander-K cruise variant introduced in 2023.
Moreover, Russia itself took the step of escalation in November 2024 by launching an unprecedented strike against Ukraine with medium-range ballistic missiles using the Oreshnik system, which features a separable warhead with multiple independently guided submunitions. Russia has also pledged to deploy Oreshnik systems in Belarus by the end of 2025.
By contrast, the Tomahawk’s long range and substantial payload will allow Ukrainian forces to inflict significant damage on key Russian military targets deep inside Russian territory. ISW already identified potential targets such as the Shahed drone production facility in Yelabuga (Tatarstan) and Engels-2 air base in Saratov Oblast — the latter a base for strategic bombers that launch air-launched cruise missiles used in strikes on Ukraine.