Putin’s Palm Sunday Attack Demands A Response

On Palm Sunday, Russian forces launched another deadly missile strike against Ukrainian civilians—this time in the northeastern city of Sumy. Many of the thirty-five dead and 129 wounded in the attack were Ukrainian Christians gathered to mark one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar. Peace is a long way off in Ukraine, as Russian president Vladimir Putin continues to answer President Donald Trump’s olive branches with violence.

The United States cannot ignore the severity of Russia’s Palm Sunday assault—or the contempt Putin’s sustained bombing campaign shows for Trump’s push for peace. Instead of restraint and soft diplomacy, the White House must take off the velvet diplomatic gloves.

Only maximum pressure on Russia, applied now, will bring Putin to the table on America’s terms.

The brutality of Russia’s Palm Sunday attack was callous, cruel, and deliberate enough to jolt senior figures in Trump’s circle. U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg was appalled, saying it “crosses any line of decency.” Trump advisor Richard Grenell expressed similar shock: “Attacking on the holy day of Palm Sunday?! Dear God.”

Trump is watching. “I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going on,” he said last week in reference to an earlier Russian strike. “Horrible. It’s a horrible thing. It’s a horrible thing.” Regarding the Palm Sunday assault, however, he was measured. “I was told they made a mistake,” he told reporters.

Horrible or mistaken, Russia’s latest salvo against Ukraine reveals a deeper flaw in the White House’s current negotiation track: it is built on a faulty analysis of Vladimir Putin’s motivations. In matters of war and peace, he responds to strength, not soft diplomacy.

Attacks like the Palm Sunday bombardment of Sumy will continue until the Trump White House stops tiptoeing around Moscow and forces Putin to the table with the seriousness this war demands. How? Trump’s team should look to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s earlier blueprint for applying maximum pressure on Moscow.

Before joining the administration, Waltz laid out a strategy rooted in conditional escalation. “If [Putin] refuses to talk [peace],” he wrote, “Washington can, as Mr. Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use.” That was smart advice.

The Ukrainians have already benefited from U.S. intelligence sharing and targeting support. This information allows longer-range Ukrainian weapons, such as those provided by the United States (like ATACMS), Europe (Storm Shadow), or domestically built (strike drones), to hit critical Russian targets at maximum range while they are most vulnerable.

Additional U.S. intelligence aids Ukrainians to defend themselves in depth against inbound missiles, drones, and glide bombs, and it gives them insights into impending Russian battlefield movements.

The United States should also support Ukraine by providing two key types of munitions. First, the long-range strike weapons, such as ATACMS and HIMARS, put Russian military assets at risk. Second,  air defense munitions, such as replenishments for Patriot systems and NASAMS systems, are needed to defend Ukraine’s people, infrastructure, and military targets. Both munitions are in short supply.

An equally urgent priority is choking off Russia’s ability to fund its war and equip its military with foreign tech.

The economic playbook is clear: slash Moscow’s oil revenues by lowering the G-7’s price cap—a Biden-era sanctions loophole—and hit Chinese and Indian violators of Russian fossil fuel exports with secondary sanctions. These powerful tools bar anyone doing business with sanctions evaders from accessing the U.S. financial system. Trump has already threatened this step: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault…I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” he recently warned. It’s a strong start.

However, secondary sanctions will not be enough without cutting Biden’s price cap from $65 down to $35 a barrel. That would be far closer to the cost of Russian oil production—a sensitive pain point for Putin.

Additional steps include continuing to tighten export bans on U.S. tech to Russia and directing the Treasury to label Russia a “primary money laundering concern”—a move that would sharply deter foreign banks from doing any business with Moscow.

It is time to show the Kremlin American strength, not accommodation. If Trump is serious about peace in Ukraine, he must be equally serious about applying maximum pressure on Russia.

Peter Doran is an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on X: @PeterBDoran. Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. Follow him on X: @MarkCMontgomery.