KYIV — Ukraine’s leaders “want to go offensive,” U.S. President Donald Trump said late Wednesday ahead of Friday’s planned meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy where Tomahawk long-range missiles are expected to be discussed.
“We’ll be talking about the war with him,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Zelenskyy.
“They want to go offensive,” Trump added. “I’ll make a determination on that, but they would like to go offensive,” he said.
Both Zelenskyy and Trump have said they will discuss Tomahawk cruise missiles and air defense systems during Friday’s meeting at the White House. The Ukrainian delegation in the U.S. has already met this week with Raytheon, the producer of Tomahawk missiles as well as Patriot missile-defense systems.
“Tools like Patriots and Tomahawks can help lay a long-term foundation for peace,” Zelenskyy said in his evening statement on Wednesday.
Kyiv is looking at Friday’s meeting to secure the advanced weaponry needed to undertake another counteroffensive against Russia’s forces.
“We indeed can go on the offensive — it all depends on the weapons we get and the approved plan,” a Ukrainian top official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
In addition to the possible supply of Tomahawk missiles, Trump said “other options would also be considered.”
Even though Kyiv has been largely in a defensive posture for the past year holding the 1,250-kilometer front line against Russia, the Ukrainian army has been able to conduct minor counteroffensive operations in recent weeks and to regain some ground in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. But Russia is slowly advancing in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, according to the Ukrainian research group DeepState.
At the same time, Moscow and Kyiv are targeting each other’s energy systems with increasing numbers of attacks by drones and missiles ahead of winter.
Ukraine sees the U.S. long-range cruise missiles as a deterrent to make Moscow think twice about attacking, not least because it would signal to the Kremlin that Washington is firmly in Kyiv’s camp.
And now the U.S. seems to be coming onboard with Ukraine’s thinking. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Washington already has a plan on supplying Tomahawks to Kyiv.
“If there is no path to peace in the short term, then the United States, along with our allies, will take the steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Trump’s remark on Kyiv wanting “to go offensive” comes days after Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief, suggested publicly that limited incursions and counteroffensive operations can be undertaken, but they often fail to deliver long-term success.
In an opinion article, Zaluzhny took issue with Ukraine’s 2024 cross-border operation in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. “I don’t know the cost of such actions, but it is clear that it was too high,” he said. Zaluzhny, now Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, suggested that large-scale counteroffensives are hampered by a “lack of resource provision,” including insufficient manpower, and that gathering sufficient forces in place to aim for a breakthrough is difficult as they will quickly be spotted by the enemy.
Moscow, meanwhile, has warned of consequences if any Tomahawk deal comes to fruition.
“The delivery of these missiles could end badly for everyone. And most of all, for Trump himself,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said in a Telegram post this week.
“All we can do is hope that this is yet another empty threat, like when Trump sent atomic submarines closer to Russia,” Medvedev said.
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