Nearly 2,000 Russian Military Facilities Will Be In The AFU's Kill Zone
- 7.10.2025, 14:34
If Trump hands over Tomahawks to Ukraine.
If Donald Trump decides to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, the latter could inflict significant damage to facilities that supply the Russian army. The Shahed drone factory and numerous military airfields, among others, could come under attack.
The Tomahawk missiles that Vladimir Zelensky asked Trump for have variants with a range of 2,500 and 1,600 kilometers. In the first case, at least 1,945 Russian military facilities would be within their kill radius, while in the second - at least 1,655, experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) have calculated.
They believe Ukraine is likely to be able to undermine the Russian army's actions at the front by targeting rear areas that supply it with weapons and support its offensive operations. A factory in the Alabuga SEZ in Tatarstan, for example, which has set up mass production of Shahed drones and their versions, could be hit, allowing Russia to launch more than 500 drones at a time at Ukrainian cities.
Air bases could also be priority targets: 76 of them fall within range of the longest-range Tomahawks, while 67 could be hit by lesser-range ones. From one such base, Engels-2 in the Saratov region, strategic bombers are flying out to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine.
Donald Trump has said he has almost made a decision to supply Ukraine with Tomahawks, but first he would still like to find out how they will be used and what targets they will be aimed at. According to an Axios source in the Ukrainian government, the White House was worried that the US would not be able to control the use of the missiles once they were handed over.
The Kremlin is trying hard to dissuade Trump from giving Kiev the Tomahawks in order to keep its rear area secure, ISW points out, drawing attention to statements by Vladimir Putin. The latter, in particular, said that this would lead to "the destruction of relations [between Moscow and Washington], at least the emerging positive trends in these relations." Prior to that, Putin said that Ukraine's use of Tomahawks would be a "qualitatively new" stage of escalation in Russia-U.S. relations; he has said so before, however, when transferring powerful weapons to Ukraine.
Ukraine can still attack targets deep inside Russian territory, but the drones they send are underpowered, ISW notes:
Ukraine's ability to strike with missiles with larger payloads deep behind Russian lines would allow it to significantly damage key military installations, if not completely destroy them.
The Tomahawk is an expensive missile, but the difficulty in the current situation may not be a question of price but of production, notes Sidharth Kaushal, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies (RUSI): "The US produces 50 to 70 of these missiles a year and has used up hundreds of them in the Middle East." In particular, they were used in June to bomb underground facilities in Iran, where Tehran is pursuing its nuclear program.
Ukraine has also begun mass production of its own new FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile with a range of 3,000 km and a 1,150 kg warhead. But its effectiveness is still unknown and it will take time to ramp up production, ISW noted.
The company that produces the Flamingo, Fire Point, had hoped to be producing at least seven missiles per day by October. Zelensky said mass production would begin late this year or early next year.