Trump Told Zelensky He Was Open to Providing New Long-Range Weapons, Officials Say
Trump didn’t commit to ending restrictions his administration has had in place for months
- President Trump indicated openness to Ukraine using American long-range weapons to strike inside Russia but made no firm commitment.
- Ukraine requested Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of 900 to 1,500 miles, and approval to use them against Russian territory.
- Trump’s social-media posts praised Kyiv and condemned Russia, signaling a potential shift in his stance on the conflict.
President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he was open to lifting restrictions on Kyiv’s use of American-made long-range weapons to strike inside Russia, but he didn’t commit to doing so during a meeting Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official and a Ukrainian official.
During the sideline discussion at the United Nations, Zelensky asked Trump for more long-range missiles and approval to use such weapons to strike targets on sovereign Russian territory. Trump replied that he didn’t oppose the idea, though both officials said the president didn’t make any commitments to reverse a U.S. ban on such attacks.
If Trump’s comments signal a policy change, it could allow Ukraine to strike more targets deeper inside Russia.
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.
At their New York meeting, Zelensky asked Trump for Tomahawk cruise missiles, the officials said, which has a range of about 900 to 1,500 miles, a request the Ukrainian president revealed in an interview with Axios published Friday. The administration is considering Tomahawks and other long-range weapons for Ukraine, according to the senior U.S. official and a senior European official briefed on the plans.
Ukrainian officials are traveling next week to Washington for talks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the senior U.S. official and senior European official. Hegseth and the Pentagon undersecretary for policy, Elbridge Colby, oversee approval requests from Kyiv for using U.S. weapons against Russian territory. They have blocked Ukraine from firing Atacms since spring.
The White House and Pentagon didn’t return a request for comment.
A decision to provide highly accurate Tomahawk missiles would be a major escalation in U.S. assistance and could pose technical challenges for Kyiv. Another option would be to augment Ukraine’s small remaining stockpiles of Atacms or another system from the U.S. arsenal.
Trump signaled a possible shift on military support for Ukraine after his meeting with Zelensky. In a social-media post, he praised Kyiv and condemned Russia as a “paper tiger” fighting an “aimless” war in Ukraine—a significant about-face following his efforts in recent months to court Russian President Vladimir Putin for peace talks to end the war.
Trump vowed to continue to provide weapons to Europe’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, which send them to Ukraine for its forces to use against Russia. “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them,” he said.
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.
The administration last month approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or ERAMs. The weapons, which have a range between 150-280 miles, are part of a $850 million arms package funded by European nations.
Trump is still hoping Moscow will make a deal to halt the conflict, but he is frustrated at the lack of diplomatic progress and has become more open to pressuring Putin militarily. At the U.N., Trump also posted on social media that U.S. weapons provided to European nations could be used by Ukraine to reclaim all its territory from Russia. U.S. officials said that message was aimed at pushing Putin to the negotiating table.
Trump has become more skeptical that Russia is winning the war after it has failed to make major territorial gains since its all-out invasion in February 2022. Zelensky and European leaders have also lobbied him for more backing, officials have said.
After meeting Trump in New York, Zelensky in a press conference praised Trump’s “decisiveness to help end this war” and called the U.S. president a “game-changer.”
Senior European officials have welcomed Trump’s rhetorical shift and said it justified their previous warnings to Trump that Putin was never serious about peace and only playing for time in his dealings with the president as the war ground on.
“The president’s words carry weight, and it was widely received very positively by all the Europeans,” European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said in an interview.
The Trump administration has imposed steep tariffs on India, a key Russia trading partner, but has yet to issue new sanctions on Russia following Trump’s efforts to get Putin to agree to a peace deal, including at a summit in Alaska in August where Trump hosted Putin. The EU is preparing new sanctions on Russia, the 19th package since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We see clearly that putting pressure on Russia together by helping Ukraine, could bring the end to this war,” said Kallas. “And as President Trump has said that he wants this killing to stop, then we should use the tools that are in our hands to make the killing stop.”