A bold new chapter of the Ukraine war is looming as Donald Trump weighs up the provocative step of letting Ukraine receive new offensive weapons to allow it to strike targets deeper in Russian territory.
For now Trump is playing down the prospect, but it is clearly on his mind, given the revelations he asked Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky whether Kyiv had the ability to strike Moscow or St Petersburg.
On Tuesday (local time), Trump stated that “we’re not looking to do that” when asked if he was considering allowing Ukraine to receive new offensive weaponry in addition to the new Patriot missile defence systems he promised this week.
But this is the next logical step for Trump in the months ahead, given Vladimir Putin will almost certainly continue to reject Trump’s calls for him to seriously engage in peace talks. If Trump wants to ramp up the pressure on Putin over the war, the most effective way would be to allow Ukraine access to longer range missiles which can strike deep into Russian territory, potentially including military targets in Moscow or Putin’s home town of St Petersburg.
Ukrainian missile strikes on either of these key cities would be a severe embarrassment for Putin, not least because it would prove to the Russian people that this distant war was effectively on their doorstep.
Putin has tried carefully to ensure he has the support of Russians in his power bases of Moscow and St Petersburg during this war by drawing his conscripts from the poor regional areas of his country, especially in the east, rather than from these two key cities. This has minimised the backlash in these cities to the large death toll because it is other people’s children who are being sacrificed in the meat grinder that is the Russian frontline.
The White House has sought to play down Trump’s inquiry about attacks on Moscow or St Petersburg, saying that “President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing”.
But now Trump belatedly appears to have discovered that Putin is an untrustworthy tyrant who is not interested in peace, it would be folly to dismiss the prospect that Trump will not ramp up the pressure in the near future by approving the sale of more offensive weaponry to Kyiv.
For now, Trump seems content to watch Putin’s reaction to his significant decision this week that the US would help Ukraine obtain advanced US-made weaponry while threatening tariffs against Moscow and its trading partners if the war is still raging in 50 days.
Trump’s decision is the first serious sign that the US President knows Putin is stringing him along with vague promises of peace talks which never eventuate.
The genius of this week’s announcement is that European nations will pay for the new US-made weaponry that will be given to Ukraine. This gives Trump – who opposed further US military aid to Ukraine during his election campaign – the ability to argue to his MAGA supporters that Europe, not the US, is funding the defence of Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t care where its new weapons come from or who pays for them, so long as it receives as much as it can, quickly and efficiently.
Both the Biden and the Trump administrations have been overly cautious with the provision of offensive weaponry to Ukraine, fearing that it would provoke a fearsome response from Putin.
But the Russian President has done little when various so-called red lines have been crossed before, including the Biden administration’s belated decision to give Ukraine ATACMS missiles with a range of about 300km.
Zelensky would love to receive US Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs, which have a longer range and which can be fired from the F-16 fighters Europe has donated to Ukraine.
It is clear Putin has refused to engage in peace negotiations because he feels he is slowly winning the war.
The only way to bring him eventually to the negotiating table is to make the war too costly to continue in terms of manpower losses and economic harm to the Russian people. To do this, Ukraine must continue to be armed not just with defensive weapons but with more long-range offensive weapons that can take the war to Putin inside Russia.
Trump has finally done the right thing by green-lighting the delivery of new defensive weapons to Ukraine. But approving the supply of longer range missiles is the next logical step if the West is serious about making this war uncomfortable for Putin.
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