Trump weighs Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine amid Moscow threat concerns

The US Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile would put Moscow within target range in the president’s case Donald Trump It was to meet the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The tomahawk has long been one of the most iconic weapons in the American arsenal. At a cost of $2 million per missile and $6 million per launcher, it can strike up to 1,500 miles into enemy territory.

If the United States allowed Ukraine to use them, it would represent a dramatic escalation in both capabilities and psychology. For the first time, Russian forces and strategic sites outside the front lines — including inside Russian territory — may be within reach of a long-range precision weapon provided by the West, against which Moscow has no reliable defense.

Unlike the short-range Storm Shadow or ATACMS systems Kiev already uses, the Tomahawk missile would give Ukraine the ability to strike targets hundreds of miles inside Russia — the air bases, ammunition depots, logistics centers, and naval assets that support the war in Ukraine. This arrival would immediately change the strategic balance.

Trump is considering handing over the Tomahawk to Ukraine if Russia continues the war

The US Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile, pictured above, would put Moscow within target range if President Donald Trump heeds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request. (Credit: Raytheon)

Crucially, this would give Ukraine the ability to strike at Russia’s energy industry, which is financing the war effort through exports to countries such as China, Iran and India.

Ukraine has used ATACMS systems to strike enemy lines in Russian-occupied Ukraine and near the Russian border – helicopter shelters, ammunition depots, and runways. But even as missiles regularly rained down on Kiev, its defense forces were unable to reciprocate Moscow, leaving the Kremlin center largely unscathed and secure after three and a half years of war.

Recently, Ukraine used British-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike an arms depot in Russia. The United States provides the targeting data for Storm Shadow, and The Wall Street Journal reported The Trump administration has lifted the ban on using missiles to strike inside Russia.

“The transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine would be a major inflection point for Western support for Ukraine,” Hudson Institute defense analyst Can Kasaboglu wrote in a recent article. “The Tomahawk is one of the most effective missiles in the arsenals of NATO countries.”

Kasapoglu noted that the strategic appeal of Tomahawk missiles “lies not so much in their raw explosive capacity as in their accuracy.”

For Moscow, the repercussions will be profound. Russian military doctrine has long relied on the assumption that its homeland’s infrastructure – especially its command and logistics networks – would remain beyond the immediate threat from Western-supplied weapons. Getting Tomahawk missiles into Ukrainian hands would destroy that assumption overnight.

A Tomahawk cruise missile launched into the Mediterranean Sea, in a 2011 Navy photo. (Reuters/Jonathan Sunderman/US Navy//Handout)

The missile’s ability to fly low and evade radar will make it extremely difficult for Russian defenses to stop it. Even advanced systems such as the S-400 or S-500, already deployed across multiple fronts, cannot guarantee interception. Each missile launched will carry not only destructive power but also psychological heft, forcing Russia to divert resources away from its offensive operations in Ukraine to protect its bases hundreds of miles away.

Rebecca Grant: How Tomahawks work and how they could change everything in Ukraine

“Such a move would inevitably free up airspace for the Ukrainian Air Force’s growing fleet of F-16s and Western-supplied ground-attack smart munitions,” Kasaboglu wrote.

It would also inject uncertainty into Russian planning. Commanders will have to assume that every major staging area — from Belgorod to the Black Sea Fleet’s Sevastopol — can be targeted. This uncertainty erodes confidence, slows operations, and places continued pressure on air defense assets.

Trump explained On Wednesday, he asked why he had not supplied Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine despite speculation that he would do so.

Allied countries say Putin is testing NATO’s limits with air strikes. (Ramil Stedikov/Pool/Reuters)

“There’s a tremendous learning curve with the tomahawk,” Trump said on Wednesday. “It’s a very powerful weapon, a very accurate weapon.” “And maybe that’s what makes it so complicated. But it would take a year. It takes a year of intense training to learn how to use it, and we know how to use it. We’re not going to teach other people. It’s going to be too far in the future.”

Trump also made clear that he believes the United States does not have much to gain.

“We need Tomahawks for the USA too. We have a lot of them, but we need them.”

The US supply of Tomahawks was classified classified. But analysts say that supplying Ukraine with missiles would weaken preparations for conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

“The Tomahawk is one of the few munitions (the Patriot is another one) that would be useful in both Ukraine and the Western Pacific,” an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said.

The War Department has already established a review process to ensure that weapons provided to Ukraine do not impair what it considers to be higher priority needs.

“This review process will almost certainly raise objections to this transfer, and may require presidential intervention,” the analysis found.

Over the weekend, Zelensky Axios said Ukraine would welcome other long-range missiles as well.

“We are not just talking about Tomahawk missiles,” Zelensky said. “The United States has a lot of similar things that do not require a lot of time for training. I think the way to work with Putin is only through pressure.”

Earlier in the week, he expressed doubts about Ukraine’s ability to win the war.

“They can still win it. I don’t think they will, but they can still win it,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

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Putin’s accounts It relies heavily on escalation control – the belief that NATO will stop short of providing weapons capable of directly threatening Russian territory. The Tomahawk will break this red line. For the Kremlin, that would signal that Washington is ready to move from containment to punishment — right after Trump imposed sanctions on lucrative Russian energy exports.

Putin told reporters this week that if Russia was attacked by Western long-range missiles, the response would be “very serious, if not overwhelming. Let them think about it.”