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It's the Brian Leryshow on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. David Sanger is with us. He is the White House and National Security correspondent for the New York Times, which these days includes everything from the high-stakes negotiations that are moving fast this week for the war in Ukraine to what one of his articles calls

tariffs by whim to Trump's attempts to negotiate with Hamas and with Iran. He also, David,

is the author of books, including his most recent, New Cold Wars, China's rise, Russia's, invasion,

and America's struggle to defend the West. We'll talk about

those Ukraine developments and more in this segment, including David Sanger's big picture

article this week called Power Money Territory, how Trump shook the world in 50 days. I'll also

want to get his take on Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring

Tuesday or Monday that the downsizing of U.S. aid is complete, USAID, and they have eliminated

about 5,000 of its foreign aid programs and kept around 1,000. There's a time story this week

with the headline, Tuberculosis Resurgent,

as Trump funding cut disrupts treatment globally. David, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Brian, it's been great to be back with you. Let's start here. What's going on with Ukraine? Zelensky accepted a

U.S. ceasefire proposal, and they're waiting for Putin to accept or reject is what I can see.

Can you tell where that's going? Well, the ball is now completely in Vladimir Putin's court.

If you listened to what his aides have said over the past month or two,

they didn't want a short-term agreement. They want an agreement in which there are no European

peacekeepers or some kind of a rapid response group in Ukraine in case there were violations. They want a

commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO. So in other words, they want to go to all of the

issues that would be part of a allegedly final settlement. And of course, Ukrainians would need

some kind of security assurances to make

sure that the Russians don't simply use the time to go rebuild their forces and invade again,

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