MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Thursday that Ukraine’s leadership was clearly nervous about Russian advances along the front line if Kyiv was asking the United States to supply it with long-range Tomahawk missiles.

The New York Times reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had asked the United States for Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of 2,500 km (1,550 miles), far greater than any missile Ukraine currently has in its arsenal.

Zelenskiy strongly suggested in a video released on Wednesday that Kyiv had made such a request.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the trend on the front lines of the war, where Russia has advanced in the past three months at its fastest pace in two years, was clear.

“Against the background of this dynamic, the Kyiv regime is beginning to show considerable nervousness,” he said.

The New York Times said Zelenskiy had asked the U.S. to provide the Tomahawks as part of the “victory plan” he presented earlier this month, parts of which he said at the time were secret.

Peskov said Ukraine’s plans, whether secret or not, “boil down to Kyiv dragging Western countries completely into the war up to their ears as quickly as possible and legitimising it. All these tricks have this ultimate goal. This is how we view it”.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Mark Trevelyan and Alex Richardson)