Sen. John McCain speaks as opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok, right, stand by him during a pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Dec. 15, 2013. (Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Sen. John McCain blasted President Obama today for his handling of Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine should serve as a wake-up call for the president about the Russian president's intentions.

"It's time we woke up about Vladimir Putin. It's time this administration got real," McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor. "We are on the verge of possibly of seeing a move to re-assert the old Russian empire, which is Mr. Putin's lifelong ambition."

"This president does not understand Vladimir Putin. He does not understand his ambitions," McCain said. "This president has never understood it. This president is the one who ridiculed Mitt Romney when Mitt Romney said the great enemy was Russia and its geopolitical threats."

McCain, a decorated Navy veteran and longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even recounted a warning about Russia and Ukraine that he gave to the president during a debate when the two battled for the presidency in 2008.

"Watch Ukraine. Ukraine, right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin, those that want to reassemble the old Soviet Union," McCain said in 2008 in a debate against then-Sen. Barack Obama.