Donald Trump’s “disappointed” in Vladimir Putin. That’s his word. Trump’s. And I’m sure Putin’s heartbroken.

Trump made the comment on Monday during a cordial meeting with Keir Starmer who, credit where it’s due, is managing his country’s bilateral relationship with the US better than any other world leader since Trump’s second inaugural.

The context for Trump’s Kremlin criticism was, of course, Ukraine. I realize this is obvious to everyone except Trump, but Putin doesn’t give a single damn what Trump thinks about Ukraine. That puts Trump in both good company and bad. With the possible exception of Xi Jinping, Putin doesn’t care what anybody, anywhere has to say about his three-year-old (and counting) “special military operation,” so Trump’s in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to his sway at The Kremlin. Simply put: He doesn’t have any.

That probably needs an asterisk. Trump’s President of the United States — believe it or not — and that matters to Moscow. But at this juncture, Putin seems resigned to the possibility that Russia may become a giant, gaseous North Korea, which is to say a nuclear-armed, dictatorial pariah state and, as an unruly Chinese protectorate, a pain in Xi’s ass.

If Putin’s in fact so resigned, then the prospect of triple-digit secondary sanctions (what Trump threatened again on Monday) is every bit as relevant to Moscow as the threat of quaternary — or nonary, or whatever degree of remove we’re on these days when it comes to penalties referencing North Korea — sanctions is to Pyongyang. So, totally irrelevant.

“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days,” Trump told reporters in Scotland, where he hosted Starmer at Turnberry. (Trump’s the kind of guy who hosts you in your own country.) “I’ll announce it probably tonight or tomorrow. But there’s no reason to wait,” he went on, chastising Putin for dragging his feet on a ceasefire agreement.

Trump famously promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours once he returned to the Oval Office. And no, he wasn’t kidding. He actually thought he could persuade Putin or failing that, bully Volodymyr Zelensky. (Trump was unsuccessful on both counts during his first term. Relations with Russia were generally poor, and before he was impeached for trying to overthrow a government he still technically led, Trump was impeached for extorting Zelensky on a recorded line.)

We’re now approximately 3,547 days into Trump’s second term, and the war in Ukraine’s still raging. Mostly because Putin refuses to stop bombarding cities and towns his ramshackle military failed to capture and hold. The frontlines are frozen, the combined death toll’s in the millions and what Trump doesn’t understand because he can’t be bothered with any sort of nuance, is that Putin’s running the Georgia playbook, just on a far larger scale, and for far longer.

As Eka Tkeshelashvili reminded the world in a July 11 piece for Foreign Affairs, the first European war of the 21st century was launched by Putin, but that war wasn’t in Ukraine. It was in Georgia. To the world, Georgia’s a cautionary tale vis-à-vis the Kremlin. To Trump, Georgia’s a place you “just want to find 11,780 votes.”

Anyway, Trump’s apparently going to give Putin an ultimatum. Either Russia agrees to a ceasefire within a couple of weeks or else the US will tax the hell out of countries which buy stuff from Russia. Stuff like oil.

“So we’re going to do secondary sanctions,” Trump explained. “Unless we make a deal. And we might make a deal. I don’t know.”

Ukraine was pleased. Zelensky’s chief of staff said Trump’s message to Putin was “loud and clear.” You can insert the famous Putin laughing meme. Because the only thing Moscow heard “loud and clear” on Monday was Trump making a fool of himself (again) by prefacing sanctions threats with allusions to a non-existent friendship with a callous, calculating dictator who’d just as soon throttle us all with his own hands as look at us.

During the same Monday remarks, Trump said, of ceasefire talks with Putin, “We just don’t see any progress being made.” As it turns out, murderous KGB operatives aren’t so easily swayed by “the art of the deal.” Who knew?