The Russia-Ukraine War, now three years old, is entering its most perilous phase yet. The Kremlin has once again raised the nuclear specter — this time in response to Washington’s deliberations over supplying Kyiv with nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles.
For many observers, the situation feels alarmingly familiar — an echo of 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. Then, the Soviet Union’s decision to deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, pushed the United States to the brink. Now, Russia warns that the U.S. is crossing the same line by arming a nation on its border with weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, sounded the latest alarm. Writing on Russia’s Max messenger platform, he warned that the potential U.S. supply of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine “could end badly for everyone, especially Trump.”
Medvedev’s reference to former U.S. President and current officeholder Donald Trump underscored Moscow’s belief that such a move would directly implicate Washington, not just Kyiv, in the conflict.
“It’s not Banderite Kiev but the U.S. that will carry out launches,” Medvedev wrote. “The supply of these missiles could end badly for everyone. First and foremost, for Trump.”
His words came shortly after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that launching and handling Tomahawks would “inevitably require the involvement of American specialists,” suggesting that the line between proxy support and direct U.S. engagement would blur dangerously.
“The handling of such sophisticated missiles would inevitably require the involvement of American specialists. That’s an evident fact,” Peskov emphasized.
For the Kremlin, that involvement could be interpreted as NATO entering the war directly — a threshold that Russia’s nuclear doctrine explicitly warns against.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, confirmed that the U.S. was considering transferring Tomahawks to Ukraine through NATO intermediaries. The plan, he said, would depend on Russia’s willingness to end the war.
“The United States would not sell missiles directly to Ukraine, but provide them to NATO, which can then offer them to the Ukrainians,” Trump said. “Yeah, I might tell him [Putin], if the war is not settled, we may very well do it. We may not, but we may do it. Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.”
The comments — half threat, half negotiation tactic — reflect Trump’s trademark unpredictability. But they also risk triggering precisely the kind of escalation Washington has tried to avoid since February 2022.
Following Trump’s remarks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly reassured Washington that any long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. would be used solely against military targets inside Russian territory. The assurance, delivered in an October 13 phone call, may offer little comfort to Moscow, which views any U.S.-origin weapon fired at Russia as a direct provocation.
The analogy to the Cuban Missile Crisis is not mere hyperbole. In 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s administration discovered Soviet nuclear-capable missiles being installed in Cuba. The confrontation that followed — a tense 13-day standoff between Washington and Moscow — is widely considered the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war.
The parallels today are striking. Then, it was Washington protesting Soviet weapons near its border. Now, it is Moscow objecting to U.S. weapons near its borders.
In both cases, the central issue is proximity — and perception. In 1962, missiles in Cuba could reach Washington in minutes. Today, Tomahawks launched from Ukraine could strike Moscow in under an hour.
“The symbolism is too close for comfort,” says Elena Tikhonova, a Moscow-based political analyst. “Russia is playing the same role America played in 1962 — it sees itself surrounded and threatened by nuclear-capable systems installed right on its doorstep.”
Compounding the danger is a subtle but critical shift in Russia’s nuclear doctrine. In November last year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that President Vladimir Putin had approved revisions allowing nuclear retaliation if Russia is attacked by “Western-supplied non-nuclear rockets.”
“The use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response,” Peskov said at the time.
That amendment, largely dismissed by Western analysts as posturing, now looks ominously relevant. The Tomahawk is a dual-capable system — able to carry either a conventional warhead or a nuclear payload. While Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, the ambiguity itself could be enough to trigger a Russian overreaction.
“From Moscow’s perspective, it’s not about what the missile actually carries,” says former U.S. diplomat William Parker. “It’s about what they can’t know in those critical minutes after a launch. That uncertainty is what makes this situation so volatile.”
First introduced in the 1980s, the Tomahawk cruise missile remains one of the most versatile and enduring weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Capable of striking targets more than 1,500 miles away with precision, it has been used in nearly every major American military campaign since the Gulf War.
Each missile costs roughly $1.3 million and carries a 454-kilogram warhead. Designed to fly at subsonic speeds and hug the terrain, the Tomahawk’s low radar profile makes it difficult to detect or intercept.
The weapon has evolved through multiple variants:
- Block I (1980s) included nuclear (TLAM-N) and anti-ship versions.
- Block II & III added improved guidance and coordinated attack features.
- Block IV (current) includes loitering capability and real-time target updates via two-way datalink.
In U.S. service, Tomahawks are typically launched from Navy destroyers or submarines. For Ukraine, deployment would likely come via adapted ground-based systems provided by NATO, though doing so would require extensive U.S. training and support — the very “specialist involvement” the Kremlin has warned about.
Despite the heightened rhetoric, there are strong arguments that Moscow’s warnings are more about deterrence than intent.
Ukraine has already used Western long-range systems — including the U.S.-made ATACMS and the British-French Storm Shadow missiles — to strike targets deep inside Russian territory. Those weapons are also technically nuclear-capable, yet no nuclear retaliation followed.
Similarly, when the U.S. and its allies delivered F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Ukraine earlier this year — both capable of carrying nuclear payloads — Russia issued dire warnings but ultimately refrained from action.
“We’ve seen this playbook before,” says Colonel (Ret.) Marcus Ellwood, a former NATO defense strategist. “Each time the West provides a new class of weapon, Moscow declares a red line. But each time that line shifts once the weapons arrive. It’s strategic signaling — not necessarily a prelude to Armageddon.”
Still, the Tomahawk’s symbolic weight — and its connection to U.S. naval nuclear strike capability — makes this round of escalation particularly sensitive.
For President Trump, the Tomahawk proposal fits into his broader strategy of coercive diplomacy — leveraging military threat to force negotiation. By floating the idea rather than committing to it, Trump positions himself as both a hardliner and a dealmaker.
Analysts say the gambit also plays well domestically. It reinforces Trump’s image as a leader unafraid to challenge adversaries, even as he keeps the door open for a new U.S.-Russia détente — provided Putin agrees to end the war on terms favorable to Washington.
For Putin, however, the stakes are existential. Allowing Tomahawks within striking range of Moscow would not only represent a military risk but a psychological one — a sign that Western deterrence has failed and Russian red lines are meaningless.
That perception could undermine his leadership at home, where hardliners already accuse him of responding too softly to Western aggression.
“Putin can’t afford to appear weak,” says Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based defense analyst. “If he does nothing after the Tomahawks arrive, he risks domestic backlash. If he overreacts, he risks global catastrophe. That’s the trap he’s in.”
Even if deployed, most analysts doubt Tomahawks would radically alter the battlefield dynamics. The war has already become a grinding stalemate, with Ukraine’s counteroffensives failing to achieve major breakthroughs despite Western support.
Long-range strikes might damage Russian infrastructure or logistics hubs, but they are unlikely to change the overall momentum of the war. Russia has adapted to dispersed logistics and hardened its air defenses since 2023.
“Tomahawks can hurt, but they can’t win the war,” says military analyst Jack Watling of RUSI. “Their main effect would be political — showing that the U.S. is willing to keep raising the stakes.”
If history is any guide, Russia will respond asymmetrically rather than directly. That could mean increasing arms shipments to U.S. adversaries such as Iran and North Korea — a trend already visible over the past year.
Intelligence reports have indicated Russian support for Iran’s missile and drone programs, as well as growing cooperation with North Korea’s military industry. Moscow could now escalate those ties as a counterweight to U.S. actions in Ukraine.
“Russia’s playbook mirrors Cold War logic,” says Dr. Angela Stent, a former National Intelligence Council officer. “You hit us in Eastern Europe; we hit you in the Middle East or the Pacific. That’s the dangerous symmetry we’re sliding back into.”
Across Europe, the renewed nuclear rhetoric is reviving old anxieties. Nations like Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states — already within range of Russian missiles — are tightening defense cooperation. Germany and France, meanwhile, are growing uneasy about the spiraling arms race.
European diplomats privately fear that Trump’s unpredictability could turn the continent once again into the main battleground of superpower rivalry.
“Europe has no appetite for a second Cuban crisis,” a senior EU official said on condition of anonymity. “But we’re trapped between American escalation and Russian aggression. We can’t afford to alienate Washington, and we can’t provoke Moscow. It’s a nightmare calculus.”
Perhaps the most dangerous element of the current standoff is the erosion of trust between nuclear powers. During the Cold War, despite hostility, Washington and Moscow maintained direct communication channels and mutual understanding of red lines. Those mechanisms have largely broken down.
The collapse of key arms control treaties — the INF in 2019, Open Skies in 2020, and New START’s suspension in 2023 — has left the world without the guardrails that once prevented misunderstandings from spiraling into catastrophe.
Today, a false radar reading or a misidentified missile launch could trigger a response within minutes — with no time for clarification.
“Deterrence only works when both sides believe the other is rational,” says U.S. security scholar Thomas Graham. “Right now, with information warfare, cyberattacks, and AI-generated deepfakes muddying the waters, that belief is eroding fast.”
The Cuban Missile Crisis ended not with victory, but compromise: the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. quietly removed its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both sides claimed success, but both recognized how close they had come to annihilation.
Whether such pragmatic restraint is possible today remains unclear. The geopolitical environment is harsher, the communication poorer, and the domestic pressures greater.
“Neither Putin nor Trump is Kennedy or Khrushchev,” says historian Mary Elise Sarotte. “Both are populists, both play to domestic audiences, and both see brinkmanship as strength. That makes this crisis potentially more unstable than 1962.”
The world has entered an era of renewed nuclear brinkmanship, not through deliberate intent but through cumulative escalation — each side pushing a little further, assuming the other will blink.
If the U.S. does decide to provide Tomahawks to Ukraine, it will mark not just a new military phase of the war, but a new psychological one — where the line between deterrence and provocation blurs beyond recognition.
The Tomahawk controversy, like the missiles themselves, symbolizes reach — the reach of American power, the reach of Russian paranoia, and the reach of a conflict that began as a regional war and now threatens global stability.
