US President Donald Trump suggested on Friday it would be premature to give Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying as he hosted Volodymyr Zelensky that he hoped to secure peace with Russia first.

“Hopefully, they won’t need it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks,” Trump told journalists, including an AFP reporter, as the two leaders met at the White House.

Trump added that he was confident of getting Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion he launched in 2022, following a phone call with the Kremlin chief a day earlier.

The US and Russian presidents agreed on Thursday to a new summit in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, which would be their first since an August meeting in Alaska that failed to produce any kind of peace deal.

“I think that President Putin wants to end the war,” Trump said.

But Zelensky, who wore a dark suit for his third meeting with Trump in Washington since the US president’s return to power, demurred, saying that Putin was “not ready” for peace.

Ukraine has been lobbying Washington for Tomahawks for weeks, arguing that the missiles could help put pressure on Russia to end its brutal three-and-a-half-year invasion. But on the eve of Zelensky’s visit, Putin warned Trump in a call against delivering the weapons, saying it could escalate the war and jeopardise peace talks.

Trump said the United States had to be careful not to “deplete” its own supplies of Tomahawks, which have a range of over 1,600 kilometres.

‘Many questions’

Diplomatic talks on ending Russia’s invasion have stalled since the Alaska summit. But Trump, who once said he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, appears set on pursuing a breakthrough to follow the Gaza ceasefire deal that he brokered last week.

The Kremlin said Friday that “many questions” needed resolving before Putin and Trump could meet, including who would be on each negotiating team. But it brushed off suggestions Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.

Hungary said it would ensure Putin could enter and “hold successful talks” with the US despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.

“Budapest is the only suitable place in Europe for a USA-Russia peace summit,” Hungarian President Viktor Orban said on X on Friday.

Trump frustration

Zelensky’s visit to Washington, Ukraine’s main military backer, will be his third since Trump returned to office. During this time, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.

At the start of his term, Trump and Putin reached out to each other as the US leader derided Zelensky as a “dictator without elections.”

Tensions came to a head in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not having the cards” in a rancorous televised meeting at the Oval Office. Relations between the two have since warmed as Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin.

But Trump has kept a channel of dialogue open with Putin, saying that they “get along.” The US leader has repeatedly changed his position on sanctions and other steps against Russia following calls with the Russian president.

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarise the country and prevent the expansion of Nato.

Kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal land grab that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.

Russia now occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory — much of it ravaged by fighting. On Friday, the Russian defence ministry announced it had captured three villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.