ROME, October 14. /TASS/. Tomahawk deliveries to Kiev will only lead to a dangerous escalation no one wants, Italian General Fabio Mini, former Chief of Staff of the NATO Command of Southern Europe and commander of the international mission in Kosovo, told TASS.

According to Gen. Mini, the Pentagon will ultimately talk US President Donald Trump out of this idea. "The Pentagon assesses technical and military aspects. From this point of view, there are several critical issues. First, the Ukrainians have no platform to launch these missiles. Second, targets will have to be determined by the Americans, which will mean their direct involvement and will lead to further escalation," he said.

He noted that the issue of Tomahawk supplies is a politically significant one for Trump. "At this point, the US president has obviously opted to side with Zelensky who is asking to intensify pressure on Russia. But deliveries of these missiles are not advantageous for Kiev either because their first use will give Moscow an excuse to retaliate and justify a tough response," the expert stressed.

Apart from that, he said that he shares the opinion that the use of such weapons will not reverse the situation on the battlefield. "The Pentagon is fully aware that these missiles, designed to be launched from submarines, don’t move fast enough and can easily be intercepted," he went on to say, adding that the United States doesn’t have too many of them, with US submarines carrying 20-24 such missiles.

"The transfer of 20 missiles will actually mean disarming one submarine," he noted.

Tomahawk for Kiev

Trump said earlier that before making a final decision on supplying Tomahawk missiles to Kiev he probably needed to discuss this matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On October 6, the US leader said that he had actually made a decision regarding the potential deliveries of Tomahawks to Kiev but did not say what it was.

Putin, in turn, noted that the use of these missiles would imply the direct involvement of the US military and warned that such a move "would mark an utterly new stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the United States."

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the potential supplies of Tomahawk missiles to Kiev will require an appropriate response from Moscow.