No Tomahawks for Zelensky

As soon as Putin made a phone call to Donald Trump, Zelensky must have known he was not going to get the US president to provide him with Tomahawk cruise missiles. And so it proved to be. Trump said it would be too escalatory, especially after Putin had agreed to meet up in Budapest. So Zelensky left Washington with nothing, and not for the first time. As it is, he is now relying on Europe to buy American weapons to pass on to him. And that has been a slow business. Arms deliveries to Ukraine have slowed by a significant margin because it all has to go through a system known as the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). Sixteen Nato countries are currently sigbned up to it and more than $2 billion has been spent so far, The UK, for reasons of its own, hasn't yet joined but is still sending more arms to Ukraine than most European nations, without using the US as broker. But Zelensky desperately wanted Tomahawks in order to pile the pressure on Moscow. There is absolutely no doubt that Putin would not have wanted to face Toamhawks hurtling over the border deep into Russia. So the phone call with Trump sorted that out. He offered to meet up and Trump couldn't resist it. Poor Zelensky, he doesn't know which way to turn. He has spent so much time flattering Trump, he hoped he had done enough to get the Tomahawks. But Trump prefers the glamour of a summit with Putin to risking escalating the war with a batch of 1,500-mile range Tomahawks. BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER, FROM AMAZON, ROWANVALE bOOKS, wATERSTONES, ETC.