WASHINGTON — In late March 2016, steaming toward the Republican nomination and with his aides still secretly in talks for a real estate deal in Russia, Donald J. Trump made a lengthy case for giving President Vladimir V. Putin what he wanted most: relief from American-led sanctions for his annexation of Crimea.

“It didn’t seem to me like anyone else cared, other than us,” Mr. Trump said in an interview then with The New York Times, his first lengthy description of what his foreign policy would look like if he was elected. The United States, he said, was “the least affected by what happens with Ukraine because we’re the farthest away.” And countries that were closer — Germany, for example — did not seem to care much.

His argument took on a new relevance on Thursday, after his former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the state of the negotiations over the real estate project’s fate. If Mr. Cohen’s latest version of events is proved true, Mr. Trump was publicly offering a conciliatory and possibly self-interested policy gesture to Moscow as he continued to seek a business deal that would require the Kremlin’s blessing.

There is little doubt that Mr. Putin was listening. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a land grab by Mr. Putin of Ukrainian territory that had once been part of the Soviet Union and before that part of pre-revolutionary Russia. And it was a power grab for the Russian leader, one that led to sanctions from Washington and most of the European allies.