While former US president Joe Biden at first placed range limits on the ATACMS sent to Ukraine, before lifting them late last year, the Trump administration did not put a public limit on the latest weapons agreement until the president issued his warning about Moscow.
Trump raised questions about Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian territory in a phone call with Zelensky on July 4, according to a report in the Financial Times.
“Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? Can you hit St Petersburg too?” Trump asked, according to sources who were briefed on the call and spoke to the newspaper.
When this triggered headlines about the prospect of Ukrainian attacks going deeper into Russia, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was not suggesting an attack on Moscow.
“President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing. He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war,” she said.
Ukraine struck Russian military airfields thousands of kilometres from Kyiv on June 1, but this involved a secret operation using trucks to carry weaponised drones close to the targets. The US has supplied ATACMS – the Army Tactical Missile System – to Ukraine, but these have a maximum range of 300 kilometres. It has also supplied the HIMARS – the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System – but these have a range of 300 kilometres, with the potential to reach 499 kilometres, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, is approximately 650 kilometres from Moscow.
While Ukraine is restricted from striking targets deep inside Russia, Russian missile and drone attacks killed more than 230 people in Ukraine in June, according to the United Nations.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a key ally of Putin, dismissed Trump’s deadline for a peace deal on Tuesday.
“Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” he posted on X.
Reuters reported that three Russian sources, familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking, said Putin would not stop the war under pressure from the West and believed Russia could endure further economic hardship, including threatened US tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil.
“Putin thinks no one has seriously engaged with him on the details of peace in Ukraine – including the Americans – so he will continue until he gets what he wants,” one of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Despite several telephone calls between Trump and Putin, and visits to Russia by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, the Russian leader believed there had not been detailed discussions of the basis for a peace plan, the source said.
“Putin values the relationship with Trump and had good discussions with Witkoff, but the interests of Russia come above all else,” the person added.
With Reuters
