Trump Says He May Give Tomahawks to Ukraine. Is He Bluffing?

President Trump’s threats to provide the missiles to Ukraine, whether he follows through on them or not, are a sign of his growing frustration with Moscow.

Fresh off negotiating a peace deal intended to end the war in Gaza, President Trump on Tuesday suggested that he may allow a sale of U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, giving Kyiv the ability to conduct long-range strikes deep into Russia.

That is exactly the kind of message that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wants to hear as he prepares for a visit to the White House on Friday. “He would like to have Tomahawks,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zelensky. “We have a lot of Tomahawks.”

But it is also something that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has warned against, saying that such a sale would signal a “qualitatively new stage of escalation.”

Mr. Trump’s threats to provide the missiles to Ukraine — whether he follows through on them or not — are a sign of his growing frustration with Mr. Putin, who has refused to budge or compromise despite Mr. Trump’s splashy attempts at diplomacy.

The Defense Department has drawn up plans to sell or transfer Tomahawks should Mr. Trump give the order. But providing the weapons would come with enormous challenges, not least the fact that Ukraine does not have the naval or ground-based launchers required to fire the missiles.

Ukraine would need a U.S. Army launcher called Typhon to fire the Tomahawks, a step that military officials say would pull the United States closer to direct confrontation with Russia. It is unclear how many Tomahawks the United States could provide, how Ukraine would safely store them and what impact a limited number of the missiles would have.

There are also real concerns of escalating tensions with Russia, a point underscored by the Kremlin’s recent warnings to Washington not to provide the long-range arms to Ukraine.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said in remarks published Sunday that “the topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern.”

“Now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides,” he told a Russian state television reporter.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has suggested that the mere threat of sending Tomahawks to Ukraine could force Mr. Putin to the negotiating table. He said he planned to talk directly with the Russian president about the subject.

“If this war doesn’t get settled, I may send Tomahawks,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “A Tomahawk is an incredible weapon. And Russia does not need that. If the war is not settled, we may do it. We may not. But we may do it.”

Mr. Trump is feeling confident in his ability to pressure countries into reaching peace deals after his experience striking an agreement meant to end the war in Gaza.

In that conflict, Mr. Trump allowed the Israel military to decimate Hamas, essentially forcing Gaza’s rulers to accept a peace deal or be destroyed. Mr. Trump’s team also worked aggressively with influential allies on each side of the conflict to pressure the parties to return hostages and prisoners, and end the killing of civilians.

Under a new financing plan negotiated earlier this year, NATO member allies are now buying U.S. weapons and ammunition, then giving them to Ukraine. So far, four packages of American arms and equipment totaling about $2 billion have been funded by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada.

“Such support is vital,” Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for NATO’s top military commander, said on Tuesday.

During the Biden administration, the White House was acutely concerned with how Mr. Putin would react to each new American weapons system provided to Ukraine. Sending weapons capable of progressively longer ranges increased the risk of a war that drew in NATO, officials believed.

With a range greater than 1,000 miles, Tomahawk missiles could reach more than five times farther than the Army Tactical Missile Systems that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. eventually agreed to provide Kyiv in 2023.

At a recent gathering of international foreign policy experts in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, Mr. Putin praised Mr. Trump but warned against sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such a step would represent a “new stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the U.S.”

Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that whether Mr. Trump goes through with the sale “depends on whether Putin is able to get through with this to Trump, and whether he is successful with telling Donald Trump, ‘You can’t do this, this will lead to nuclear war.’”

On the other hand, she said, the world was witnessing a coordinated pressure campaign from Europe to push the United States more strongly behind Ukraine, believing only intense and united leverage against Russia could get Mr. Putin to stop his war.

“What we see now is sort of a coordinated campaign, especially pushed by the Europeans and also by the Ukrainians, to signal to Moscow that it is not on the winning side, and that support for Ukraine and pressure from the U.S. is still there,” she said.

For months, Mr. Trump has signaled that he is increasingly inclined to provide Ukraine with the weapons. In August, he wrote in a social media post that Ukraine was like a sports team that was hampered because it was not allowed to play offense.

“It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offensive. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia,” he wrote.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, who calls Mr. Putin “a friend,” once again warned that the Russian president was heading down the wrong path.

“He’s got to really settle this war. And you know, they have long lines waiting for gasoline in Russia right now,” he said, adding: “His economy is going to collapse, and I’d like to see him do well. I mean, I had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin, but he just doesn’t want to end that war, and I think it’s making him look very bad.”

Adam Goldman and John Ismay contributed reporting.

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