How Trump Changed U.S. Policy Toward Ukraine
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.
The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Beth in Woodland Hills, California. I'm at the Girl Scout Cookie Mega Drop, |
| 0:05.0 | helping to distribute thousands and thousands of cookies to the troops of the greater Los Angeles area. |
| 0:10.8 | The fires might have slowed us down, but they won't stop us. |
| 0:14.6 | This podcast was recorded at 12.19 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, February 18th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, |
| 0:24.2 | but hopefully you'll buy a box and support your local girls. |
| 0:31.1 | I got my tree foils. Two boxes. I'm glad to hear that cookie distribution is still going. |
| 0:37.3 | Hey there. It's the NPR Politics |
| 0:39.0 | Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Frank Oudonyas. I cover the White House. |
| 0:43.8 | And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And today on the show, the latest on efforts |
| 0:48.5 | to end the war in Ukraine. Officials from the U.S. and Russia met today in Saudi Arabia in an effort to try and broker a deal. And, Greg, that's where we will start. What do we know about these talks? |
| 1:00.1 | So they took place in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. And these are the most extensive, formal, diplomatic talks the U.S. and Russia have had since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, almost exactly |
| 1:11.8 | three years ago in February of 2022. The U.S. was led by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, |
| 1:18.8 | and the most immediate issue on the agenda is trying to find a way to end the war in Ukraine. |
| 1:25.6 | But Rubio said there are even larger goals here, and they include |
| 1:29.2 | trying to normalize and stabilize the U.S.-Russia relationship, looking for ways to possibly |
| 1:35.0 | improve economic and geopolitical ties. And Sarah, can't emphasize enough. This is absolutely |
| 1:41.1 | a 180-degree term from what we've seen under the Biden administration, and this is happening quickly, lots of moving parts, and it's really the first major foreign policy initiative in the Trump administration. |
| 1:53.0 | And let's listen to what Secretary of State Rubio had to say. |
| 1:56.4 | Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey, but an important one. |
| 2:00.3 | And President Trump is committed to bringing an end of this conflict, and as he said when |
| 2:04.2 | he campaigned for president. |
| 2:06.0 | And he wants it to be end in a way that's fair. |
... |
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