Yet in his speech announcing the strategy on Dec. 18, Mr. Trump made one fleeting mention of Russia: of how it and China “seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth.” He made no mention of Russian meddling and instead praised intelligence sharing between Russia and the United States in the face of terrorism threats.

August 2017: Signing a sanctions bill reluctantly

After Congress passed legislation in late July to impose sanctions on Russia and limit the president’s authority to lift them, Mr. Trump signed the bill but criticized it as “seriously flawed — particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate.”

Mr. Trump signed the legislation on Aug. 2. Several days earlier, President Vladimir V. Putin’s government had retaliated by seizing two American diplomatic compounds in Russia and telling the United States Embassy in Moscow to reduce its staff across the country. Mr. Trump did not respond, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, declined to comment.

However, the State Department described Moscow’s move as “a regrettable and uncalled-for act.”

“We are assessing the impact of such a limitation and how we will respond to it,” the department said in a statement.

July 2017: Suggesting he found Mr. Putin’s denial persuasive

After Mr. Trump met with Mr. Putin during a Group of 20 summit meeting, he recounted the Russian leader’s assurances that Moscow did not intervene in the 2016 election.

“First question — first 20, 25 minutes — I said, ‘Did you do it?’ He said, ‘No, I did not, absolutely not.’ I then asked him a second time, in a totally different way. He said, ‘Absolutely not,’” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Reuters that was published on July 12. “Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.”

January 2017: Playing down Russian cyberattacks

On Jan. 6, the intelligence community released a declassified report of its conclusions about a Russian cyberattack on the election. In a statement about his briefing on the cyberattacks that day, Mr. Trump pointed to “Russia, China, other countries.”