President Trump is unhappy with Vladimir Putin. The Russian isn’t heeding the President’s entreaties to stop the killing in Ukraine, and Trump is nonplussed.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Separately, Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.”

Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Putin is behaving. The Russian is the same man he’s been for two decades, bent on reconstituting as much of the old Soviet empire as he can get away with. Ukraine is his obsession. He’s not going to modify his ambitions merely because Trump alternates between begging for peace and scolding outbursts on social media.

Trump and his advisers fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy. No “neocon” idealism for them. But on Putin they are starry-eyed idealists, mouthing “peace” as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so. Trump’s naivete is helping Russia continue the killing as long as Putin wants.

The good news is that the U.S. Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia. As GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions. Energy sales are Putin’s financial lifeline. President Biden refused to apply these so-called secondary sanctions, and Trump can’t make up his mind.

If Trump signaled that he supports the Graham-Tom Cotton-Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate. Combined with the promise of more arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out, these sanctions might change Putin’s calculations about the price of war. But GOP Senators can act whether or not Trump approves. They can vote on the sanctions bill, and force the President to face the hard reality of Putin’s ambitions that Trump would rather avoid.