President Trump has signaled the United States may send long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, allowing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to strike military targets deep inside Russia. The Kremlin has warned this move would escalate tensions between Moscow and Washington.

Trump suggested this week that Tomahawks would be a central point of discussion when Zelensky visits Friday to meet with Trump for the third time in Washington.

“I know what he has to say. He wants weapons. He would like to have Tomahawks. Everyone else wants to, and we have a lot of Tomahawks,” Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House.

The missiles, designed to fly at high subsonic speeds and at low altitudes to better evade radars would provide Kyiv with a lot more range and capability to hit Russian military targets and energy facilities, such as oil and gas infrastructure, experts told The Hill this week.

The Tomahawks, which the U.S. began developing in the 1970s and were first fired by the U.S. military during in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, can have a range up to 1,000 miles, depending on the variant.

The munitions have a far greater range than the guided Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which former President Biden’s administration gave to Ukraine in 2023. ATACMS have a range up to 190 miles.

“There's a huge number of potential targets that Ukraine could hit. It could continue the strike campaign against oil refineries and do even more damage against them, which definitely would hurt Russia,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst and co-founder of Finland-based Black Bird Group, which closely tracks the Russia-Ukraine war.

Kastehelmi added that Ukraine could target Russia’s command elements, electric warfare stations, air bases, logistical hubs and other locations, which........

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