Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is right that Russia needs to feel more pressure to negotiate constructively, but it doesn’t have to be Tomahawks. The goal should be pressure that helps shape the negotiation while preserving the dealmaking space and can be escalated gradually, avoiding key qualitative decision points that are more likely to trigger a Russian response.
The Trump Administration’s strategy is based around lowering the political pressure against Russia while sustaining the military pressure and thus incentivizing both Russia and Ukraine to make compromises. During ceasefire discussions, many of which I participated in, Russia has never accepted an end to the war that abandons its core goal of isolating Ukraine from the West. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pointed out, additional direct coercive measure risks placing the U.S. in an explicitly adversarial relationship towards Russia and abandoning that space. This is a key condition of pressure options that the material benefit of the pressure on Russia not be outweighed by the political cost. There are certainly situations where the latter is irrelevant, but in a limited war, absent a decisive defeat of either side, some affirmative action by the Russians will be necessary to reach an agreement in the end. That will be easier if the U.S. does not message that this is a zero-sum game.
The fundamental problem, however, is that Moscow still believes time is on its side. Its forces are advancing in Donetsk, incrementally, and Ukraine faces a lingering manpower problem. Should Russia not succeed in winning the war on the battlefield, the number of dead may succeed in neutering Ukraine as a nation. Worse, given different threat perceptions, aerial escalation against Ukraine and its neighbors fractures NATO and imperils the U.S. security link to the continent. It thus has no incentive to compromise.
Giving Tomahawk attack missiles to Ukraine, as President Zelensky is currently asking, might be worthwhile by increasing the cost of the war and making it more visible for average Russians. But this is a marginal cost, likely to take a long time to shape Russian decision-making. Ukraine has also already has used long-range drones that can strike deep inside of Russia. It’s not clear the added capacity would be determinative. There is also some risk of escalation, though further escalation against the West by Moscow is fraught and it is almost fully escalated in Ukraine already.
At the very least, this should be supplemented by indirect pressure, worsening Russia’s strategic situation without open bilateral confrontation. Some of this is already being done. Partially due to Administration policy, the price of oil has declined by nearly 20 percent since Trump took office. Russia relies on fossil fuel revenue for up to half of its revenues. Trump has also revived his pressure on NATO to increase its defense spending. As a result, all 32 allies reached the 2 percent threshold in 2025 and almost all committed to 5 percent for the future.
The Tomahawk issue reflects the diminishing returns of what might be called vertical escalation: that is, escalating the intensity of the war in a defined context. Russians negotiate best when they can narrow the field of negotiation to a distinct set of issues where they have an advantage. Ukraine is one such issue. They negotiate worst when they are strategically surprised by expanding the issue set, as with the Star Wars missile defense program under Ronald Reagan.
More valuable than vertical escalation would be horizontal escalation, another type of pressure with low political cost: that is, linking Ukraine to other issues – particularly security issues – in the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship. A tacit linkage between a Ukraine ceasefire to Russian security equities in other theaters, like the Middle East, is something that Russia has repeatedly signaled it wants.
The U.S. is in a strong position in the Middle East after repairing ties with Syria and striking the Iranian nuclear program. If Russia continues pressuring Ukraine, Washington could increase its pressure on its remaining Middle Eastern interests or link a cessation to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Reestablishing ties with the Taliban and returning to Bagram fits directly into this circuitous strategy. Few things make Russia more uneasy than a foreign presence in Central Asia, which has been a weak spot in the Russian orbit since Soviet times. The administration’s opening to Belarus is also a diplomatic probe against a Putin ally and an opportunity to provide an object example of Trump’s goodwill.
The entry of North Korea into the Ukraine war also presents an opportunity to expand balancing against Russia and China both by beginning NATO accession process for Russian-proximate Asian countries like Japan. Given its clear link to European security and Europe’s vocal support for Ukraine’s entry into NATO, Europeans would hardly be able to object. And for the President, this would have the collateral benefit of reducing the EU’s ability to triangulate with Beijing in trade negotiations.
The U.S. can still get a ceasefire that safeguards its vital national interests. But it must shape the ground for a settlement.
Dr. Andrew L. Peek was twice the Senior Director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council.
