On the eve of his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump once again failed to say definitively whether he believes Russia was behind the cyberattacks that roiled the presidential election last fall. “I think it was Russia and I think it could have been other people and other countries—could have been a lot of people interfered,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter in Warsaw, Poland, on the first leg of this week’s European tour. “I’ve said it very simply. I think it could very well have been Russia but I think it could well have been other countries—I won’t be specific—but I think a lot of people interfered.”

It’s not the first time that Trump has demurred or equivocated on the question of foreign interference in the 2016 election, which multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was orchestrated by Russia, and specifically directed by Putin. He has suggested that the culprit behind the hacking of the D.N.C. and Clinton campaign could have been a 400-pound hacker sitting on their bed; China; or even “some guy in his home in New Jersey”. And while Trump has since conceded that he believes the Kremlin was the likely perpetrator, he has continued to cast doubt on the assessment of top intelligence officials, and has always stopped short of condemning Russia. People close to the president have reportedly said that he has conflated the effort to punish Russia for interfering in the election with efforts to delegitimize his election victory.

“He may be the only person who has doubts whether Russia interfered in the U.S. election,” Richard Stengel, who served as the under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department under President Barack Obama, told me. “As always, he confuses interference with influence. He is so frightened that people think that Russia influenced the election he will barely admit that they interfered in it.”

Trump’s apparent inability to acknowledge Russia’s role in undermining U.S. democratic institutions leaves the president at a disadvantage as he prepares to meet Putin for the first time on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. A series of complex issues are on the table ahead of the meeting—including rising tensions in Syria, the worsening North Korean nuclear threat, and Russian aggression in the Baltic. But the elephant in the room will undoubtedly be Russia’s election meddling and the retaliatory sanctions the Obama administration leveled against Moscow—notably whether the Trump administration will return two suspected Russian spy compounds in New York and Maryland. Taking a forceful stand against the Russian president would play well back home, given the incredible pressure Trump is under not to concede anything to Putin. But Trump has also made warmer relations with Moscow a cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda, putting him in the awkward position of negotiating around a sanctions policy based on allegations he himself has dismissed as “fake news.”

The White House has offered the public few details about what the two leaders will discuss during the meeting, which has left foreign policy experts concerned that Trump will be out-maneuvered by the former K.G.B. official. “[Trump] should know and we should understand: Putin is coming with an agenda,” Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama, told The Washington Post. “Putin is going to be prepared. If you are going to freelance it, doesn’t mean he’s going to. He is a very effective interlocutor.”