From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Donald Trump spent more than an hour on the phone with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin

on Tuesday, and the readouts didn't tell us too many details about what the two men discussed.

But the bottom line is this. Putin did not accept Trump's 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine and Zelensky

did. So what comes next? Is the president prepared to up the pressure on Putin? Plus later,

we'll chat about whether Europe is suddenly waking up from a long slumber and getting serious

about its own rearmament. Welcome to Potomac Watch. I'm Kate Batchelder-Odell. I'm filling in as your

host today, and I'm joined by my colleagues Bill McGurin and Joe Sternberg, both are columnists on our page and my co-conspirators on the editorial board.

We're going back to Ukraine today as we've done on many previous episodes. This podcast and our editorial pages have been advancing the idea that what happens in Ukraine could turn out

to be one of the most consequential events of the Trump presidency, even if Trump himself may prefer

to focus on deportations or tariffs. If Trump gets a bad deal in Ukraine, given the Russian

imperial appetite, it may be one of the only things anybody remembers about his second term 50 years from now.

So let's use that as a launching point to get into the particulars of where we are on 19 March.

Putin and Trump had this long phone call. It appears Putin is demanding major concessions even

for a ceasefire for 30 days, a mere pause in the shooting, let alone a broader, more durable piece that Trump says

that he wants. Joe, why don't you open us up here and tell us, do you think that the phone

call moved us any closer to a durable piece in Ukraine? And how would you be advising the president

to proceed from here? No, it didn't.

Look, I think that the sort of Trump administration has come into this situation with the conceit that this is a problem that is amenable to artful deal making.

And, you know, I think that certainly there are a lot of international problems around the

world that might be

amenable to artful deal making. It's not obvious to me, and I don't think it's been obvious

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