“We said from the start that this infamous commission of Mr. Mueller’s would not find anything because nobody knows this better than us,” he added. “Russia did not meddle in any elections in the United States. There was no collusion, as Mr. Mueller said, between Trump and Russia.”

To be sure, U.S.-Russian relations have not substantially improved in the two and a half years since Putin made his first official phone call to Trump, during which the leaders lamented the “unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations” between the two countries, according to a Kremlin statement. Congress forced the Trump administration to impose new sanctions on Kremlin-linked companies and oligarchs in 2017 in response to Russia’s election interference, and the U.S. expelled 61 Russian intelligence officers last year in response to Russia’s alleged poisoning of a former spy on British soil. (Trump was apparently furious, however, at the number of diplomats ordered to leave. “There were curse words, a lot of curse words,” an official told The Washington Post.)

American presidents, moreover, have tried in the past to repair relations with Russia. But none have praised and deferred to Putin as Trump has. And the Kremlin appears to have taken notice. An Atlantic analysis of Russian state media shows that Moscow has remained optimistic about the relationship despite the setbacks, focusing on the leaders’ personal chemistry and encouraging people to read into their body language while consistently remaining one step ahead of the White House in disclosing their interactions. That has been especially easy for Russia given how little is known about what Trump and Putin have discussed during their private meetings and during informal conversations at summits in Germany, Vietnam, Finland, and Argentina over the past two years.

A damaging leak about an Oval Office meeting between Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak may be somewhat to blame for the extensive secrecy—The Post reported in May 2017 that Trump had revealed classified information provided by the Israelis during that meeting. Former National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster called the story “false,” but Putin still tried to insert himself into the cleanup: “If the U.S. administration considers it possible, we are ready to submit a transcript of Lavrov’s talk with Trump to the U.S. Senate and Congress,” Putin said shortly after the news broke, joking about how Lavrov had failed to share the “secrets” with him.

Trump took the extraordinary step of confiscating his interpreter’s notes after his first private meeting with Putin in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, according to the Post, and demanded that the interpreter refrain from discussing the meeting with members of his own administration. (The White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters earlier this month that Trump was concerned about leaks when he confiscated the notes.) Then–Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters after that meeting that Trump and Putin had discussed Russia’s election interference in 2016. But he wouldn’t say whether Trump accepted Putin’s denial of any such interference at face value—providing Russia with another golden opportunity to shape the narrative.