Key Points and Summary – In a stunning policy reversal, President Donald Trump reportedly encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to conduct deep strikes into Russian territory, according to a Financial Times report on their July 4th phone call.
Trump allegedly asked Zelenskyy if he could “hit Moscow” and “St. Petersburg too” if the U.S. provided the necessary long-range weapons.
This aggressive new stance, which came a day after a “bad” call with Vladimir Putin, marks a dramatic pivot from Trump’s earlier efforts to pressure Ukraine into a peace deal and signals a new strategy of using significant military leverage to force Russia to the negotiating table.
Does Trump Want to Bomb Moscow, and Could It Work?
According to the Financial Times, President Donald Trump surprised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a July 4 call by asking if Ukraine was capable of striking Russia’s capital city, Moscow.
According to the Times, Trump “privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep strikes on Russian territory, even asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy whether he could strike Moscow if the US provided long-range weapons.”
“Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow?” Trump reportedly asked, before asking the same about St Petersburg, Russia’s second city.
He Has Threatened This Before
This isn’t the first time President Trump has talked about bombing Moscow.
Last week, CNN reported that Trump told a private gathering of donors during his 2024 presidential campaign that he once sought to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine by launching military strikes against Russia’s capital city.
“With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the **** out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” Trump told attendees, before alleging that Putin told him, “I don’t believe you.”
The report followed comments made by the president’s former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in 2022. During an interview with Newsmax, Giuliani recounted how the president threatened to bomb Moscow’s “big gold bubbles,” a reference to the Russian city’s grand cathedrals.
Could It Work?
Trump believes his past threats were enough to stop Putin. He has said as much on multiple occasions. But that assertion is difficult to verify.
Even if Putin gave the threats some credence, he likely viewed them through the lens of Trump’s unconventional leadership style. As a president known for disregarding diplomatic norms and embracing unpredictability as a tool, Trump may have introduced a degree of uncertainty into Putin’s calculations – enough to create hesitation over fears he may respond in other ways.
It’s plausible that Putin believed a swift campaign in Ukraine would provoke a limited or delayed response from the Biden administration, which he may have perceived as more institutionally cautious.
By contrast, Trump’s erratic and transactional approach to diplomacy created a more ambiguous risk.
Is This Really Trump’s Plan?
The White House has walked back the comments this week, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters that the president’s comments were taken out of context.
“President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing,” Leavitt told CNN. “He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war.”
Speaking to reporters on the White House South Lawn on Tuesday, the president also dismissed the reporting, insisting that he does not support long-range missile strikes into Russian territory.
“No, he shouldn’t target Moscow,” Trump said.
“No, we’re not looking to do that,” the president added when asked about providing long-range missiles to Ukraine.
Could Ukraine Do It?
But could Ukraine actually do it? According to Zelenskyy, yes.
Per the Financial Times, Zelenskyy told the president that he could “absolutely” bomb Moscow.
“We can if you give us the weapons,” Zelenskyy said.
Kyiv has long been willing to strike Russia. Western leaders were initially hesitant to provide long-range weapons during the early days of the war over fears that doing so would escalate the conflict. That changed in early 2024 when Ukraine began intensifying strikes on oil refineries inside Russia. In May 2024, NATO countries began to rethink their position. French President Emmanuel Macron became one of the first major leaders to signal support for Ukraine using Western weapons to strike inside Russia – a move that resulted in Germany and other countries giving their implicit approval by easing long-range weapons restrictions.
Striking Moscow, however, would be the biggest Ukrainian escalation of the war so far. Given the severity of Russia’s retaliatory strikes following Operation Spider’s Web, it’s not hard to envision an even more extreme response from Moscow if the United States were to in any way support Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s capital city.
Whatever form that response might take, the Kremlin is almost certainly as reluctant to trigger a broader war as the United States is to provoke one.
About the Author:
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.
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July 15, 2025 at 6:17 pm
Trump is as dumb as Hitler.
When Hitler conceived his great plan to invade the USSR, he failed to notice physically just how large the Soviet union was. Its population then was almost twice as large. Easily over one and a half times the German population.
Today, trump has or is making the same mistake as Adolf Hitler.
Heavy strikes against Moscow will compel Russia to FINALLY bring out the heavy stuff that Putin has all along being very afraid or too frightened or too fearful to use.
Once the heavy weapons are used, there’s no going back.
The Russian army will eventually roll into kyiv like what the red army did in 1945.
Trump today now becoming as dumb and desperate as Hitler could be because of the top secret Epstein file or Epstein list.
He knows something must be done to sway attention away from that to the fighting in Ukraine.
It’s crystal clear now trump is unlikely to finish his second term as president.
Trump, like Hitler, is totally and surely k-a-p-u-t.
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