Posted on 09/29/2025 4:14:00 PM PDT by marcusmaximus
President Donald Trump is flexing new leverage in the war in Ukraine — allowing the nation to use U.S. weapons to strike deep into Russia, weighing whether to provide Kyiv with Tomahawk cruise missiles and vowing Ukraine can take back all its land — while pressing China and India to slash purchases Russian oil.
Ukraine supporters are cheering the shift, noting that after months of frustration over the grinding conflict, Trump appears to be changing tactics. From a combative February meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his declaration last week that Ukraine could reclaim all of its original territory, the president is signaling a harder line on Moscow.
On "Fox News Sunday," Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg revealed that Trump had authorized long-range Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. Vice President JD Vance added that the administration is weighing whether to send Tomahawk missiles, a capability the Biden White House had denied. The weapons would be funded by European partners.
"We're certainly looking at a number of requests from the Europeans," Vance said. "It's something the president's going to make the final determination on."
The U.S.-made Tomahawk has a range of about 1,500 miles, meaning Kyiv could theoretically target Moscow if Trump approves the transfer. Russia quickly issued warnings, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov questioning whether Ukrainians could operate such systems without American assistance.
"Who can launch these missiles, even if they end up on the territory of the Kyiv regime?" Peskov asked. "Can they be launched only by Ukrainians, or must it still be done by American personnel? Who provides the targeting? A very deep analysis is needed here."
He dismissed the weapons as strategically meaningless. "There is no panacea that can change the situation on the fronts. There are no magic weapons, whether Tomahawk or others, that can alter the dynamics,"
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
You got that right. PDJT is simply putting pressure on Putin to stop the killing. U
They've only left Little Zelya in there because he's incompetent.
Once they realize he's a dangerous nutter, it's Hazelnut Time.
You got that right. PDJT is simply putting pressure on Putin to stop the killing.
———-
If this action is like every one of the West’s previous actions, it will most certainly backfire….the killings will only increase…..Sanctions, all 18 packages failed- Russia became stronger, St Z bombs the Belograd thermal plant- Vlad unleashed the largest missile attack ever across all of Ukraine, etc, etc…fools.
And right now Russia looks like a big grinding wheel that's softer than the material it's trying to grind and shedding a lot of men and materiel in the process.
We'll see who's ground down first.
Fight to the Last Ukrainian...
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The world ends at Armageddon
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“No fricking way PDJT will allow WWIII to start.”
This Tomahawk thing is just a word game to put pressure on Putin.
Trump is being dumb, dumb, dumb...
I donated twice this month via PayPal.
Tomahawk cruise missiles can hit Putin’s house. Zelvis does not have anything like that.
Trump is using Tomahawk missiles as leverage on Russia. Ukraine will get 50-100 and burn through them like a kid setting off fireworks on the 4th of July.
The problem is supply & demand, there is a great demand for Tomahawks but very little supply.
Too bad they don’t grow on trees.
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I can have discussions with fellow Free Republic contributors - but not with freeploaders.
FAFO...
Why don’t you consider a scenario of Venezuela striking the US with new found advanced missiles instead?
WIKI [Flamingo]
The missile has a fixed straight wing and a turbofan jet engine mounted above the fuselage. This gives it a superficial resemblance to the V-1 flying bomb and the Ukrainian-built Soviet Tu-141 and Tu-143 reconnaissance drones, although the V1 used a pulsejet and the Tu-141 and Tu-143 were designed with engines mounted inside the main fuselage. The rear of the fuselage has four flight control surfaces in an X-configuration. The fuselage is primarily built from radar transparent composite materials (fiberglass), whilst the engine nacelle is built from metal in order to withstand high temperatures. The jet engine appears to be the Ivchenko AI-25 produced by Ukrainian manufacturer Motor Sich and historically used for the Aero L-39 Albatros. The engine is significantly larger than those found in comparable cruise missiles.
Flamingo’s warhead is claimed to be 2.5 times the weight of the warhead of the American Tomahawk Block V cruise missile, with a stated weight of 1,150 kg (2,540 lb). According to a Dutch military expert interviewed by UkrInform, Flamingo is a classic aerial bomb converted into a cruise missile by adding a jet engine, fuselage, and wings. The warhead, shown in pictures with the nose cone removed, may be a repurposed FAB-1500 bomb, but based on the warhead’s size the 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) FAB-1500 seems unlikely, with a more likely bomb being either a 2,039-pound (925 kg) Mark 84 high-explosive bomb or a same-weight BLU-109/B bunker buster. If the missile uses a conventional gravity bomb, the weight of the warhead would be 925 kg (2,039 lb) but the explosive filler would only be 430 kg (950 lb), more in line with comparable cruise missile systems. The Flamingo’s claimed range is approximately double the unclassified range of the Tomahawk Block V, allowing it to hit targets anywhere in the European part of Russia and as far as Novosibirsk.
Unlike its Western counterparts, the Flamingo lacks complex visual guidance systems (TERCOM, DSMAC) but still promises a similar speed (900 km/h). The primary means of navigation is by satellite navigation using a jamming-resistant, controlled reception pattern antenna layout. Claimed accuracy is a CEP of 14 m (46 ft) at any range and in ideal conditions. The simplified design is intended to speed production.
Fire Point announced in September 2025 that it had increased production of its Flamingo cruise missile from 30 units per month in August to 50 units per month, with plans to reach seven missiles per day by the end of the year.
In September 2025 the Danish government announced that a subsidiary of Fire Point will start production of solid rocket fuel for the Flamingo in Denmark from 1 December 2025. Denmark temporarily suspended 20 laws and regulations to open the plant.
Fire Point had purchased a large number of Ivchenko AI-25 from various stockpiles. These engines had an engine or flight time of some 10 hours given the engines aren’t being used in jet aircraft - restoring them not to full usage but enough for a Flamingo missile’s flight time of three and a half hours. Previous media reports said that the engines had been made by Motor Sich. However, Fire Point claimed that they had found “thousands of such engines” at various landfills in Ukraine. These engines, in order to keep costs down, have had the titanium parts replaced by “cheaper and easier-to-produce alternatives” to make them flightworthy. Engines can also be taken from the some six thousand of these engines were manufactured and still in use in aircraft like the L-39 Albatross and Hongdu JL-8 jet trainers across “post-Soviet countries, Asia, and Africa”. Fire Point has also established its own plant to produce engines for the missiles, whether this is the Ivchenko AI-25 under licence or not is unclear.
The warhead is also something that Fire Point doesn’t manufacture. The current warhead is said to “pierce thick concrete” and can go some ten meters of underground, there is a cluster warhead in the works plus “many other types (of warhead)” in development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-5_Flamingo
[August 21]
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