For President Vladimir V. Putin, one phone call marked a turning point as great as any battle in his three-year war.
In a lengthy call on Wednesday, President Trump delivered a message to Mr. Putin that encapsulated much of how the Russian leader sees today’s world: that Russia and the United States are two great nations that should negotiate Ukraine’s fate directly and move on to addressing even weightier global affairs.
It was the clearest sign yet that Mr. Putin, despite Russia’s disastrous failures at the outset of his Ukraine invasion in early 2022, could still emerge from the war with a redrawn map of Europe and an expansion of Russia’s influence in it.
The call came on the same day that Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared that the United States would not support Ukraine’s desire for NATO membership. It also came as the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, widely seen as sympathetic to Mr. Putin, as the next director of national intelligence.
Taken together, the developments marked a payoff for Mr. Putin’s monthslong campaign of lavishing praise on Mr. Trump — apparently in the belief that the American president has the power to deliver a Russian victory in Ukraine.
“Putin is playing a very clever game,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said. “He’s investing 100 percent into the effort to seduce Trump.”