Since taking office more than 18 months ago, Donald Trump has treated Russian President Vladimir Putin with the sort of respect and deference of which U.S. allies can only dream. In that time, he’s leaked information about a classified Israeli intelligence operation to two Russian envoys; hesitated to blame the Kremlin for the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy; exploded with rage when he found out the U.S. had expelled more Russian diplomats than European countries had following the incident; congratulated Putin on his election victory, against the express directive of senior aides; assured Russian officials that plans for sanctions announced by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in response to the Kremlin’s support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose actions have been likened by Trump to those of an “animal,” were never gonna happen; refused to condemn documented Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election; and asked for Russia to be let back into the G7 after it was kicked out for invading another European country. All of which is to say, his claims during a breakfast meeting in Brussels on Wednesday came as something of a shock.

In what one outlet characterized as a “startling public outburst,” Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that Germany—and not, say, the executive branch of the U.S. government—is “totally controlled by Russia.” Seemingly referring to a new Baltic Sea pipeline, called Nord Stream 2, that will double the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany, Trump ranted: “We’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia . . . If you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia. They got rid of their coal plants; they got rid of their nuclear; they’re getting so much of their oil and gas from Russia. I think it is something NATO has to look at.”

Sources who’ve discussed the pipeline with the president told Axios that it’s a long-standing obsession of his for two reasons: 1) because he wants Germany to buy American gas instead, and 2) because in his mind, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a “hypocrite” who’s always “lecturing” him on things like maintaining international order, while “not spending enough on Germany’s defense [and] sucking up to Iran and Russia.” Unfortunately for Trump, not only did his breakfast tangent make everyone present deeply uncomfortable, it was also grossly inaccurate. As Reuters notes, his comment that the Germans get “60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline” vastly overestimated Germany’s dependence—in reality, about 20 percent of its energy use derives from Russian oil and gas. He also seemed to imply that the German government was putting up the funds for the pipeline, when in fact it’s a commercial venture. Moreover, whether accidentally or on purpose, Trump failed to articulate the real issue with the pipeline, which is still opposed by some E.U. members: it could potentially allow Moscow to cut off gas to other Baltic states, giving it even more leverage over Western Europe.

By pointing a diminutive orange finger at Germany, Trump is trying to spread the blame, deflecting attention from his own administration’s all-too-cozy ties to Putin, whom he’ll visit later this week. It’s the same move he pulled in October 2016, when he so eloquently told Hillary Clinton, “No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet.” For their part, the Europeans were not impressed; Merkel, who grew up in a Germany that was literally partially controlled by Russia, remarked that the country had been “free of Russian control since the fall of the Berlin Wall”:

She recalled her own youth in Soviet-dominated East Germany and said she was “very happy that today we are united in freedom, the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that, we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions.”

Trump, meanwhile, has done nothing to assure the West he’s not totally controlled by his buddy Vlad:

Trump predicted as he departed Washington that the “easiest” leg of the journey would be the sit-down with Putin—a comment that did little to reassure allies fretting over his potential embrace of a Russian leader they regard as troublesome.

All in all, it was a less-than-stellar kickoff to a summit that U.S. allies were already dreading, and which is only expected to get worse if Trump gets his way: