BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – He gave Brazil’s president a gregarious thumbs up and leaned in close to confer with the British prime minister, but President Donald Trump was always looking the other way when Russian President Vladimir Putin walked into a room.

A day after Trump abruptly canceled a meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit, the two presidents danced around each other on the carefully choreographed global stage, eager to project distance at a meeting designed to bring the world’s leaders together.

“I don’t know,” Trump said when reporters asked if he intended to exchange pleasantries with Putin at some point during the two-day meeting. “Not particularly.”

Trump’s cold-shoulder represented a break with how he has interacted with the Russian leader in the past. For years Trump brushed aside calls to take a harder line with the former KGB officer, countering it would be “a good thing” if the two nations “got along.”

At a meeting in Helsinki this summer, Trump declined to confront Putin about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

But Trump displayed little of that bonhomie with Putin on Friday. As he walked into a room full of global leaders here for a group photo, Trump breezed past Putin without stopping for a handshake. Later, as the leaders mingled before a working session, Trump and Putin mostly remained on opposite sides of the room.

Trump did meet with the leaders of other countries, including Japan, South Korea and India. He signed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico. And he exchanged pleasantries with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who sits at the center of a diplomatic crisis involving the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey last month.

Trump has been reluctant to blame the U.S. ally despite reports that intelligence agencies believe the prince may have had prior knowledge of the killing. In a setting where body language is often parsed for meaning, Salman and Putin drew viral attention for a high-five-turned-handshake before the summit's first working session.

Trump and Putin may yet find a moment to connect in Argentina, including possibly at a leaders' dinner set for Friday. But the White House repeatedly shot down the idea of a formal meeting, even as Kremlin officials repeatedly insisted that it might happen.

“There will be ample opportunity for President Trump and Putin to meet,” said Nicholas Burns, a Harvard professor and veteran U.S. diplomat who served presidents of both parties. “A normal president would deliver a tough message to Putin on Russia’s aggression.”

Throughout the day Trump and White House aides blamed the lack of engagement with Putin on Russia’s decision to seize three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait last weekend, a move that jabbed at the already tense relations between the two nations.

But critics – including a Russian official – questioned whether the decision to cancel was actually based on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty plea Thursday. Cohen, who once professed his loyalty by claiming he would “take a bullet” for him, told prosecutors Trump’s company sought to build a tower in Moscow deep into the 2016 campaign cycle.

Responding to the firestorm from Cohen’s agreement, Trump tweeted that he “lightly looked” at a real estate project in Russia during the campaign but later dropped the idea.

“We have heard the official explanation and taken note of it," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters. “But is it true? I think the true reason is rooted in the domestic political situation in the United States, which is crucial for decision-making.”

Trump dismissed such speculation.

“Purely and simply, Ukraine,” he said when asked why he withdrew from the Putin meeting. “On the basis of what took place with respect to the ships and the sailors, that was the sole reason.”

Though White House aides hoped the G-20 would focus attention on Trump’s trade policies, the Cohen plea cast a shadow over his efforts. Trump signed a new trade agreement early Friday with Canada and Mexico to replace the controversial NAFTA deal, making good on a campaign promise. Flanked by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – another regular sparring partner -- and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump touted how far the three countries had come on trade.

"This has been a battle, and battles sometimes make great friendships," he said.

And Trump was also set to host Chinese President Xi Jinping for a dinner on Saturday as the two countries remain locked in an escalating trade war.

But questions about the Trump-Putin dynamic followed the president for much of the day. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert Mueller "probably does undermine our relationship with Russia," but stressed it had nothing to do with the canceled meeting.

By foreclosing on a substantive encounter with Putin, observers said Trump also missed an opportunity to engage with his geopolitical rival on important issues.

In addition to the confrontations in Ukraine and Syria, Trump and Putin would likely discuss the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the U.S. has threatened to leave over allegations Russia is defying its terms.

“The INF agreement is really, really important,” said Richard Kauzlarich, a George Mason University professor who was previously the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina and, before that, to Azerbaijan.

“It’s clear they’ve been engaged in violations of the agreement,” Kauzlarich said. “I would hope that there could be some pretty strong words addressed to the Russians.”