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President Donald Trump has said that he is considering the sale of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Having tried and failed to convince Putin to end the war through a negotiated settlement, Trump is now ready to escalate and increase military help for Kyiv. This is the correct and only path to stop the conflict and stabilize Europe’s eastern frontier. The war, which started in 2014 with the Russian occupation of parts of Donbas and Crimea and then intensified in 2022 with Russia’s attack on Kyiv, has to reach a military stalemate before any negotiations are feasible.

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Such a stalemate is still far from happening. Since 2022, Ukraine has successfully thwarted most Russian advances. It repelled the initial assault on Kyiv. It freed Kherson. It even counterattacked on Russian soil near Kursk in August 2024 and remained there for several months before finally retreating.

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Russia is not ceasing its attacks, however. This year, Russian forces have conquered slivers of Ukrainian land in the east, but at a very high cost. Some estimates put Russian casualties at more than 30,000 per month since January 2025. While the Russian army recruits roughly the same number per month, it is still an extremely high depletion of manpower for very little territorial gain, demonstrating a continued will to incur large losses.

In brief, neither side has achieved a breakthrough sufficient to defeat the enemy, and neither side seems to be exhausted to the point of surrendering.

The war has turned into a bloody war of attrition. It will end only when one side decides that it cannot extract further resources — manpower, materiel, and money — from its nation and its supporters. Russia has ample manpower, even though it accepted the help of thousands of North Korean troops who, used poorly, took enormous casualties.

Russia’s economy is also seeing signs of weakness. Its energy sector, the main source of exports, is hurting due to sanctions and Ukrainian targeted attacks.

Ukraine, on the other hand, is facing a shortage of manpower. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now in the mid-40s, and demographic trends have been negative for decades. Its economy is also weak and devastated by daily Russian missile and drone attacks. Western support, both financial and military, keeps its economy and military going.

So far, Russia has been unable to break the Ukrainian spirit and to end Western aid to Kyiv, its two keys to winning the war. Meanwhile, Ukraine has failed to defeat the Russian military and to demoralize Russian public opinion, its two keys to victory. 

One of the main tactical disadvantages facing Ukraine has been the very limited ability to strike inside Russia. Western suppliers of weapons, in fact, have prohibited the use of their missiles or planes to strike targets within Russian territory. Driven by an exaggerated fear of escalation, Berlin as well as Washington have forced Ukraine to fight mostly on its own territory. Only Ukrainian-produced weapons, such as drones and, in the near future, a simple medium-range cruise missile, may be used to hit refineries or bases in Russia. Ukraine has been very innovative and has conducted some spectacular and surprising attacks, such as the June 2025 Operation “Spiderweb” that launched more than a hundred drones from containers prepositioned near Russian airbases. But these are still very sporadic attacks, the scale of which pales in comparison to the daily onslaught of Russian missiles on Ukrainian cities.

This is why the possible American introduction of Tomahawk missiles, meant to penetrate deep inside Russia, can play an important role. Combined with American intelligence data, these weapons would allow Ukraine to strike with great precision Russian logistical nodes, airbases, energy infrastructure, and weapons production sites that until now have remained beyond reach. 

There are political and military benefits of striking inside Russia. For most Russians, the war has been a relatively distant concern and their support for the war continues to appear strong, fanned by years of nationalist rhetoric. But if Ukraine is able to hurt Russia’s economy by limiting production and distribution of energy (e.g., by striking refineries and pipelines) and by altering their daily life (e.g., by regularly shutting down air travel), it is plausible that Russian public opinion may tire of the war, pressuring Putin to alter his strategy.

Moreover, Ukraine’s inability to strike consistently and precisely inside Russia has allowed Russian forces to regroup and refit — and, farther away, to produce and store weapons — without disruption. Letting Ukraine strike beyond the border will hamper Russian tactical effectiveness on the frontline, further slowing, if not stopping, their advances into Ukraine. Russian territory cannot remain a sanctuary if Ukraine is to end the war as a sovereign country.

Putin will not stop without serious costs being imposed on Russia. His ambition is to go down in history as the great restorer of Russian greatness, a modern-day tsar rebuilding the lost empire. Ukraine has always been the key to such restoration: with it, Russia is a European great power, while without it, it remains an Asiatic state relegated to a secondary position behind a growing China.

For Putin, this is not a war of minor territorial adjustment, a business deal gone bad that can be settled around a negotiating table. It is the war that will define his historical legacy. And the war will end only when Putin reaches the conclusion that there are no gains to be achieved through military force and, on the contrary, the continued use of such force is overly costly and endangers his current and future domestic political reputation.

There is no alternative but to give Ukraine the means to escalate. 

It is true that, even if the decision to sell Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv actually occurs, it will take months before Ukrainian forces can use them. The transfer, training, placement, and the development of necessary logistical backing of these U.S. cruise missiles will take time. But the mere fact that Washington is seriously pondering Tomahawks for Ukraine is indicative of a change of strategy based on the recognition that negotiations with Moscow will happen only when Russia is hurting.

Moreover, the potential decision to sell Tomahawks to Kyiv carries also a powerful symbolism: only a few select US allies have them (UK, Australia, Netherlands, and, soon, Japan). If Ukraine joins this group, it will not only be militarily stronger but also more anchored in the West.

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In the end, the best outcome is an independent, sovereign, militarily strong, and economically growing Ukraine. Ukraine needs to remain geopolitically separate from Russia, preventing a westward expansion of Russian power that will destabilize Europe for decades. It does not have to be a member of NATO, which would require a lengthy process that is likely to divide existing allies and result in a negative decision. But it needs to be anchored in the West through military (e.g., a serious Western commitment to keep Ukraine militarily strong in the years to come) and economic cooperation (e.g., by helping Ukraine rebuild its industry and agriculture). 

An independent and strong Ukraine will preserve Europe’s stability and, indirectly, help the United States. What happens to Europe, in fact, matters to the U.S. not just because Europe is an appendage of American power, but because European stability will allow the US to concentrate on other regions of the world, especially on Asia’s Pacific rim.

Jakub Grygiel is a National Security Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is an associate professor of politics at The Catholic University of America and a senior advisor at The Marathon Initiative.