On the cusp of Vladimir Putin’s act of naked aggression against the sovereign country of Ukraine, the most important Republican in the country praised the Russian autocrat for his “genius.”

Former President Donald Trump’s comments were another instance of his shockingly favorable and morally bankrupt statements about Vladimir Putin over the years.

Asked in a radio interview what had gone wrong that Putin recognized the independence of two Ukrainian breakaway regions on President Biden’s watch, Trump couldn’t muster one remotely appropriate sentiment.

He immediately cited “the rigged election” of 2020, an obsession of his that is so all-consuming, it makes Ahab look uninterested in the White Whale by comparison.

He characterized the recognition of the regions that Russian separatists claim as “wonderful” and “smart,” never mind that it was a transparently cynical step to create a pretext for war.

He said the so-called peacekeepers Putin had ordered into the regions were “the strongest peace force” and we could use it on our southern border.

He called Putin “a very savvy” guy — which is one way to put it — and bragged of knowing him “very, very well.”

It would have been a shoddy performance from a backbench congressman or a commentator, but Trump is the former leader of the free world. He’s never going to feel constrained by that role the way, say, George H.W. Bush did, but he shouldn’t sound like he could be an anchor on RT, either.

Putin is a brutal killer whose cynicism has been on blatant display the last few weeks. He seeks to reverse the West’s victory in the Cold War and drastically diminish US influence in Europe, toward the ultimate end of tag-teaming with China to end the American-created international order.

Far from being the puppet of Putin he was made out to be, Trump as president pursued a reasonably tough-minded approach toward Moscow. He armed Ukraine and Poland, inveighed against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and urged the Europeans to spend more on defense and increased our defense spending and oil and gas production — all of which were unwelcome to Putin.

In the interview, Trump asserted that Putin’s moves against Ukraine “never would have happened” while he was president, and he may well be right. It is certainly notable that Putin has now invaded Ukraine twice, during the administrations of Trump’s predecessor and his successor, yet not while the man he allegedly controlled was in the White House.

Trump’s unpredictability and sensitivity to slights and threats surely would have made Putin think twice before trying his current gambit.

That doesn’t justify looking past the Russian autocrat’s transparent lies, lunatic vision of a restoration of the Soviet empire and his effort to dismember or wipe from the map a sovereign country by force of arms. Stalin was pretty “savvy,” too, but it’s not the most pertinent thing to be said about him.

(Trump did call the Russian invasion “a sad thing for the world” in an interview Wednesday night with Laura Ingraham, although he still struck some of his familiar notes.)

Trump’s comments were clearly driven, in large part, by his disdain for Joe Biden and his abiding belief that the election was stolen from him. Biden’s failures over his first year or so in office have indeed been contemptible. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be rooting for him to handle the Ukraine crisis as ably as possible and certainly doesn’t make his antagonist in the Kremlin any more palatable.

As for the 2020 election, the public isn’t as interested as Trump in endlessly relitigating an event that is further in the rearview mirror every day.

Trump’s fans, of course, love that he plays by his own rules and commits daily outrages against the establishment’s pieties. One reason he lost in 2020, though, is that he refused to abide by the conventions of the presidency. To the extent he makes it obvious that he never will — and learned nothing from his defeat — he will make it that much harder to win another election.

All things considered, Trump has demonstrated incredible staying power. He remains the chief representative of his party and its most powerful figure, with millions of good people still vested in him. He should do better.

Twitter: @RichLowry