Less than 24 hours after setting off alarm bells across the foreign policy community with a perplexing comment about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Donald Trump doubled down on his stated intention to pursue a decidedly pro-Russian policy if elected president. Rather than trying to distance himself from Vladimir Putin amid speculation that the Kremlin may be at the center of an insidious plot to get him elected, the billionaire candidate defended his plan to ally the United States with the former Soviet republic and lauded the Russian president for his leadership.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we actually got along with Russia? Am I wrong in saying that?” Trump said at a campaign rally on Monday, The New York Times reports. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we teamed up with Russia and others—including surrounding states and maybe NATO—and we knocked the hell out of ISIS and got rid of these people?”

Trump, who has faced repeated criticism for his sympathetic comments about Russia, long considered a foreign policy adversary for antagonism toward U.S. diplomatic efforts and its recent incursions into Ukraine, has not backed away from his unpopular position. Trump’s most recent defense comes roughly two weeks after the Republican presidential nominee stunned allies when he suggested that his administration would not necessarily come to the aid of the Baltic states in the event of a Russian invasion, threatening the nearly seven-decades-old NATO alliance and renewing longstanding concerns about the relationship between the real-estate mogul’s campaign and the Kremlin.

Since then, Trump has failed to escape scrutiny for his increasingly pro-Russia stance. The populist candidate has sustained his criticism of NATO, arguing that many of its 27 members don’t contribute enough, and his staffers reportedly watered down an amendment in the G.O.P. platform about providing military assistance to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, has also been criticized for his alleged business ties to Russian oligarchs and past work on behalf of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin client now living in exile in Russia.

Still, Trump has stuck to his guns. On Sunday, he went on the defensive in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, appearing to argue that Putin would not invade Ukraine, despite having already done so in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. (At a campaign stop Monday, Trump claimed that he meant Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine again if he were president and blamed the annexation of Crimea on the Obama administration.)

Trump’s praise of Putin is nothing new, nor surprising. In the past, the Republican has declared that Putin is “doing a great job” and brushed off criticism of the Russian president following allegations that he oversaw the death of journalists, and maintained that he thought Putin was still “a good leader.” Trump, who has disparaged alliances like NATO and advocates withdrawing from the world stage, is a natural ally for Putin, who seeks to expand his own influence by weakening European institutions. Both men share a deep distrust of the media. And Trump has expressed repeated admiration for the sort of indiscriminate, unilateral carpet bombing campaign Russia is currently carrying out against ISIS (as well as moderate Syrian rebels and civilians alike) in Syria—an approach that mirrors Trump’s calls to “bomb the shit out of them.” Trump and Putin share a similar paranoid policy worldview that hinges on overt displays of power and distaste for international norms. When you think about it, an alliance seems only natural.