Trump asked Zelensky if Ukraine could attack Moscow

Donald Trump has privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep attacks on Russian territory, even asking Volodymyr Zelensky if he might attack Moscow if the United States provided him with long-range weapons, according to people briefed on the discussions.

The conversation, which took place during a July 4 call between the leaders of the United States and Ukraine, marks a stark shift from Trump's previous stance on Russia's war and his campaign promise to end U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. While it remains unclear whether Washington will hand over such weapons, the discussion underscores Trump's growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to participate in ceasefire talks proposed by the U.S. president, who once promised to resolve the war in one day.

The July 4 conversation with Zelensky was precipitated by Trump's call to Putin the day before, which the US president described as "bad."

Two people familiar with the conversation between Trump and Zelensky said the US president asked his Ukrainian counterpart if he could strike military targets inside Russia if he provided him with weapons capable of doing so. "Volodymir, can you reach Moscow? . . . Can you reach St. Petersburg, too?" Trump asked on the call, according to these people. They said Zelensky responded: "Absolutely. We can do it if you give us the weapons." Trump expressed support for the idea and described the strategy as aimed at "making them [the Russians] feel the pain" and forcing the Kremlin to the negotiating table, according to the two people briefed on the call.

An official briefed on the call said the conversation reflected a growing desire among Ukraine's Western partners to supply long-range weapons capable of "taking the war to the Muscovites," a sentiment privately echoed by U.S. officials in recent weeks.

The White House and the Ukrainian presidential office did not respond to requests for comment from the Financial Times .

The discussion between Trump and Zelensky led to the US sharing a list of potential weapons for Kyiv with the Ukrainian president in Rome last week, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. During a meeting with US defense officials and NATO government intermediaries, Zelensky received a list of long-range strike systems that could potentially be made available to Ukraine through third-party transfers. The agreement would allow Trump to circumvent the current congressional freeze on direct US military aid by authorizing arms sales to European allies, who would then pass the systems on to Kyiv.

The Ukrainians had requested Tomahawk missiles, precision-strike cruise missiles with a range of about 1,600 kilometers. But the Trump administration, like the Biden administration, was concerned about Ukraine's lack of restraint, said a person familiar with the list shared with Zelensky.

During an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday, Trump announced a plan to provide Ukraine with Patriot air defense systems and interceptor missiles, but did not reveal any shipments of other weapons systems.

The US president said he was "very unhappy" with Russia and its president for the lack of progress toward an agreement to end their war. "I'm disappointed in President [Vladimir] Putin, because I thought we would have reached an agreement two months ago." Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's security council and former deputy president under Putin, downplayed Trump's decision.

"Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin... Russia didn't care," Medvedev wrote in X. Two of the people briefed on the Trump-Zelensky call and familiar with U.S.-Ukraine discussions on military strategy said one weapon discussed was the Army Tactical Missile System, or Atacms.

Ukraine has used U.S.-supplied Atacms missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) to strike targets in Russian-occupied territory and, in some cases, deeper within Russia. Atacms can be launched from HIMARS rocket systems that the Biden administration delivered to Ukraine. But they don't fly far enough to reach Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to attack Western targets in response to Western supplies of advanced weaponry to Ukraine, but has yet to do so. After Ukraine first used the Atacms system to strike military targets inside sovereign Russian territory last November, Putin said the war had "taken on elements of a global nature" and responded by launching a test of the Oreshnik, an experimental intermediate-range missile, in the city of Dnipro.

The Russian president said Moscow had the right to "use our weapons against military facilities of countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities, and if aggressive action escalates, we will respond with the same decisiveness and symmetry."

Following the Atacms attacks, Russia also published an updated version of its nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for potential use. The changes could provide for a Russian nuclear first strike against the United States, the United Kingdom, and France (the three NATO nuclear powers) in response to Ukraine's attacks against Russia with weapons such as Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles.

Washington has occasionally warned Ukraine not to use them to attack deep inside Russia, but those restrictions now appear to be loosening. Ukraine has primarily used its own domestically produced long-range drones to attack military targets inside Russia, which help fuel its war machine.

Its most audacious attack came in early June, when Ukraine's SBU security service launched swarms of suicide drones hidden inside prefabricated houses it smuggled into Russia and attacked the country's fleet of strategic bombers. The planes had been used in Moscow's wartime bombing of Ukrainian cities. At least 12 planes were severely damaged or destroyed in what kyiv dubbed Operation Spiderweb.