The Ukrainian Armed Forces on Tuesday announced a “successful hit” against a Russian chemical plant in Bryansk, an operation to slow down Russia’s war machine that was only possible because of U.S. intelligence. The fact that the U.S. shared intelligence with Ukraine for an attack inside Russian territory is the latest indication that President Trump is increasing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of ending the brutal war.

Around 5:00 p.m. local time, Russia issued air raid alerts related to “launches of Storm Shadow cruise missiles” towards Bryansk, a Russian administrative district 220 miles southeast of Moscow. Soon afterward, Bryansk Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz announced that “air defense forces shot down six aircraft-type drones,” resulting in “no casualties or damage.”

However, the British-made Storm Shadow missiles successfully evaded Russia’s air defenses, successfully striking the plant and detonating an ammunition depot on site. The U.K. had sanctioned the plant in September because it produces ammunition, explosives, and missile components for the Russian war machine.

This attack indicated that the Trump administration had loosened restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to fire the Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory, The Wall Street Journal inferred. The U.S. controls Ukraine’s ability to fire the British-made cruise missiles because they rely on American targeting data.

This spring, the Pentagon instituted a review procedure for approving Ukrainian plans to fire the missiles across the Russian border. Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delegated the authority to approve attacks to the head of U.S. European Command, General Alexus Grynkewich, who is also the commander of NATO forces.

At the end of September, the Trump administration began providing Ukraine with intelligence needed for long-range missile strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure, which is funding its war machine. Tuesday’s Bryansk strike may be the first instance of Ukraine acting on that intelligence.

The new permission is not a paradigm-shifting change. The Storm Shadow missile system can travel up to 350 miles. But Ukraine has already carried out its own attacks deep into Russia. In June, Ukrainian drones crippled long-range Russian bombers stationed 1,300 miles and 3,000 from Ukraine’s borders, signaling that Ukraine already has ways to neutralize Russia’s advantage of geographic size. Ukraine continues to strike targets behind Russian lines, such as an oil depot in Crimea, which has reportedly been burning for four days.

Ukraine’s strike comes after a White House official said the president was “optimistic” about ending the war in Ukraine. After contriving a peace plan for Gaza where many observers thought none could be had, Trump has now turned his diplomatic attention back to Europe’s deadliest war in 80 years.

Thus far, negotiations have not made much progress. After hearing Russian demands, President Trump this week called off a scheduled meeting with Putin, saying, “I don’t want to … waste time.” It took months to drag Hamas to the negotiating table — or rather, to drag Hamas’s sponsors to the negotiating table and leave the terror group with an ultimatum — and that deal has stepped forward with all the surefootedness of a drunken baby. It may take even longer to drag Putin to the negotiating table, and it may even require a display of American military prowess like the blow that stupefied Iran.

In the meantime, Russia continues perpetrating war crimes by indiscriminately dropping bombs on Ukrainian cities. Overnight on Wednesday, Russian drones and missiles killed at least six people and injured 44 across 10 Ukrainian oblasts (administrative districts). A residential building and a kindergarten were among the places hit.

Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies and all their subsidiaries. The sanctions freeze their assets, prohibit commerce with them, and threaten to impose sanctions on anyone who does business with them. The Treasury Department’s efforts to isolate Russia’s oil industry were explicitly taken to “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy.”

In response to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting, President Donald Trump called their story “fake news” in a Truth Social post. “The Wall Street Journal story on the U.S.A.’s approval of Ukraine being allowed to use long-range missiles deep into Russia is FAKE NEWS! The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!”

President Trump says many things, not all of which agree with one another. As the U.S. president conducts multi-faceted diplomacy in a laudable attempt to end the war, he evidently believes that publicly admitting to condoning Ukrainian strikes in Russia would damage his attempt to position himself as a broker between the two. Let him keep his plausible deniability for now. Who knows? His denial may even be true.

Intelligence sharing is far less than Ukraine hoped for when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House this week. Based on hints Trump gave last week, Zelensky hoped to secure American-made Tomahawk missiles, which can fly further and destroy more than the British-made Storm Shadows. However, Trump backed away from his proposal to sell Tomahawks to Ukraine after a phone call with Putin.

If Ukraine was disappointed in its hope to buy Tomahawks, access to American intelligence (however deniable) may only seem like a consolation prize. But if it enhances their ability to launch missiles at targets inside Russia, it’s a decent consolation prize, and one that raises the pressure on Russia, ever so slightly, to negotiate in earnest.