Trump May Send Tomahawks to Ukraine

President threatens to send the long-range missiles if the war doesn’t end soon

By Natalie Andrews, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 12, 2025 7:07 pm ET 

Two men clean debris near a damaged home in Odesa, Ukraine.
People removing debris near a damaged home in Odesa, Ukraine, on Saturday. IGOR TKACHENKO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

  • -- President Trump threatened to send Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t agree to a peace deal.

  • -- Trump indicated a willingness to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-made long-range weapons to strike Russia.

  • -- The U.S. has previously blocked Ukraine from using U.S.-provided long-range missiles to bomb targets within Russia.

President Trump threatened to send long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, should Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to decline his efforts to negotiate a peace deal in the region.

“I might say, look, if this war’s not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday as he flew overseas to Tel Aviv, where he is set to take part in a ceremony for a landmark peace deal between Israel and Hamas.

Trump is still hoping Moscow will make a deal to halt that conflict but has become frustrated at the lack of diplomatic progress and more open to pressuring Putin militarily. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

A decision to provide highly accurate Tomahawk missiles would be a major escalation in U.S. assistance. Last month, Trump met with Volodymyr Zelensky and told the Ukrainian president that he was open to lifting restrictions on Kyiv’s use of American-made long-range weapons to strike inside Russia, though he didn’t make any commitments to reverse a U.S. ban on such attacks.

On Sunday, he seemed more amenable, saying he planned to speak with Putin. “I might have to speak to Russia, to be honest with you, about Tomahawks,” Trump said. “Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.” 

For months, the administration has blocked Ukraine from using U.S.-provided long-range missiles, including the Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as Atacms, to bomb Russia, leading to complaints from Kyiv that it couldn’t effectively punch back against Moscow. 

“I might tell him that if the war is not settled, that we may very well do it,” Trump said. 

The U.S. continues to provide weapons to Europe’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, which send them to Ukraine for its forces to use against Russia. Ukraine has continued to use drones and other indigenously made weapons to strike inside Russia. It is also developing the Flamingo, a Ukrainian-made long-range weapon, which officials in Kyiv say will reduce its dependence on U.S. and European arms.

In recent weeks, Trump has signaled a possible shift on his support for Ukraine, offering praise for Kyiv and condemning Russia for fighting an aimless war in Ukraine, where thousands of soldiers are dying in battle every week.

Write to Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ukraine turns the tables on Russia

Image
A bold Ukrainian operation in Kursk has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Column by  Ishaan Tharoor The Washington Post , August 14, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT; see also Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war.  In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of  the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union . This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insi...
Read more

Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal

Image
Analysis by  Nick Paton Walsh , CNN   Updated 9:19 PM EDT, March 18  Orig inal article contains additional links and illustrations . See also   Thomas L. Friedman ,   I Don’t Believe a Single Word Trump and Putin Say About Ukraine,  The New York Times , March 18; and also A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.” This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed. They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.” This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his ...
Read more