From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

President Trump once approached the challenge of ending Russia's war in Ukraine as a straight-ahead

deal, something that he could achieve easily.

But after months of trying, he's signaling that he might actually walk away.

Today, my colleague Michael Crowley on the phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and what it tells us about how the conflict could end.

It's Wednesday, May 21st.

Michael, nice to speak with you.

I don't think we've ever met before.

I don't think we have.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, our pleasure.

So, Michael, we want to talk to you about this two-hour phone call that happened between

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that happened on Monday.

But before we get there, we haven't really checked in on the war between Russia and Ukraine

since that disastrous Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President

Vladimir Zelensky.

I want to understand what happened in between President Vladimir Zelensky. I want to understand

what happened in between Trump and Zelensky kind of blowing up at each other and this call

that was, I think, pretty remarkable in a few ways. Yeah, well, in some ways, we are at a point that no

one could have predicted back in February when Zelensky was

essentially thrown out of the White House by Trump. And, you know, it looked like Ukraine was cooked.

Trump was very angry at Zelensky and very eager, by all indications, to please Russian president Vladimir Putin. But in the weeks

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