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Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you live from London.

I'm James Menendez.

And we're going to begin today with Ukraine and a flurry of diplomacy over how to end the war. The focus today is Washington, D.C.,

in a meeting a little later between the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump

at the White House. President Zelensky is expected to use that encounter to press the Americans

for access to long-range tomahawk missiles that are capable of striking targets deep inside Russia.

But whether or not the missiles are forthcoming, the fact that they're being discussed at all

seems to have ruffled feathers in the Kremlin. On Thursday, Mr. Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin

and they agreed to meet again in person. In Hungary, probably in a couple of weeks' time. We're also going to be

discussing that dynamic too, because some fascinating new details have emerged about their

last encounter. First of all, let's find a bit more about those Tomahawk missiles. What

difference would they make to the Ukrainians? A question for Dr. Sidart Kauschal of the security think tank, the Royal United

Services Institute in London. The Tom Hawks would provide the Ukrainians with a combination of

long range and precision that they currently lack. You know, Ukraine does have some very long

range and high payload capabilities like the

Flamingo, but they're relatively inaccurate. However, as we've seen over the course of this war,

the ability to strike high-value Russian targets deep within Russia, you know, like Russian bombers,

has not changed the course of the war fundamentally. And it's likely that Ukraine would

have Tomahawks in relatively small numbers if it received them. And a certain number of this

arsenal would likely be shot down by Russian air defenses. So it would be a useful capability,

...