Doubling down on his goal to upend the established world order and remake it in his own image—one that looks particularly like Vladimir Putin’s own vision for Europe— Donald Trump told two foreign newspapers over the weekend that he would consider lifting sanctions on Russia and believes that the NATO alliance, put in place to check Russian influence in the wake of WWII, is “obsolete.”

In back-to-back interviews with the German newspaper Bild and The Times of London, Trump reiterated that he would make “good deals” with Russia, including lifting the Obama administration’s sanctions—put into place after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and again after the Kremlin was determined to have interfered in the 2016 U.S. election—in exchange for a new arms control treaty. “I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it,” Trump said, contrary to call last month for a new nuclear arms race. “I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit,” he said.

Trump, who has been criticized for repeatedly echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy agenda, also suggested that NATO is obsolete—long the contention of the Russian government, which has sought to diminish the Western military alliance and weaken the European Union. “I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump said, arguing that the alliance “wasn’t taking care of terror” and that many member nations weren’t living up to their financial obligations to spend at least 2 percent of their G.D.P. on defense. (In fact, NATO allies did invoke Article 5 of the alliance after the 9/11 attacks, and NATO has played a major role in Afghanistan.) “With that being said, NATO is very important to me,” he added, before continuing to gripe. “There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”

The Kremlin was quick to agree with Trump. “NATO is, indeed, a vestige [of the past],” a government spokesperson said in a statement released Monday. “Considering that it [the organization] is focused on confrontation and its entire structure is devoted to the ideals of confrontation, then, of course, this can hardly be called a modern structure meeting the ideas of stability, sustainable development and security.”

Beyond offering conciliatory words toward Russia, Trump also took a shot at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a major U.S. ally, telling the Times that he will “start off trusting both [Putin and Merkel]—but let’s see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all.” Merkel returned fire Monday, warning that “Europeans have our own destiny in our hands,” and that she would continue her work with NATO, despite Trump’s threats.

The heated exchange, combined with Trump’s friendly disposition toward Russia, raised alarms across the European Union, whose existence Trump suggested he was agnostic toward. “People want their own identity, so if you ask me, others, I believe others will leave,” he shrugged in his comments to the Times. The European Union, he added, is “basically a vehicle for Germany,” and said that Merkel had made a “very catastrophic mistake” by accepting Syrian refugees, whom he referred to, incorrectly, as “illegals.”

Trump’s continued moves to align the U.S. with Putin, who was recently implicated by multiple intelligence agencies in a series of cyberattacks allegedly designed to help Trump win the presidency, comes amid deepening divisions over Russia between the president-elect and the C.I.A.—and even with potential members of his own Cabinet. Last week, at retired General James Mattis’s confirmation hearing, the Defense Secretary designate argued that Russia constitutes one of the “principle threats” facing the United States, and that he would not scale down U.S. involvement in NATO. John Brennan, the outgoing C.I.A. director, also publicly disagreed with the president-elect on Sunday, suggesting in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Trump does not yet fully understand the scope of the Russian threat. Trump hit back, as usual, on Twitter, where he accused Brennan and the intelligence community of failing in Syria and Ukraine. “Not good!” he wrote. “Was this the leaker of Fake News?”