Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday published a post on X mourning Lindsey Graham, who died at 71 on Saturday night, just one day after meeting with Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Graham was one of Washington’s leading supporters of the proxy war in Ukraine, and according to Zelensky, he had visited the country 10 times since Russia invaded in February 2022.
“He visited Ukraine ten times during the years of Russia’s full-scale invasion and was here with our people when it was most needed. We remained in constant dialogue, and I will miss our conversations. We met twice in just the past week,” Zelensky said.
During his last visit to Kyiv, Graham announced that the White House had reached a deal with Congress to move forward with a new bill on Russia sanctions and said he would work on it when he returned home. He also visited a Ukrainian drone manufacturing plant operated by the Ukrainian firm SkyFall, which comes as Ukrainian forces continue to fire hundreds of drones into Russia each day, operations supported by US intelligence.
“I believe that it would be a huge mistake for America not to cooperate with Ukraine in the field of drones. They are ready to help us because we were ready to support Ukraine in the hardest times,” Graham said, according to the Kyiv Post.
“Today, I visited a state-of-the-art enterprise that has huge capacities and produces technologies far more advanced than anyone on the planet. After all, necessity is the ‘mother’ of all inventions,” he added.
Graham’s support for Ukraine against Russia goes back many years, well before Russia invaded in February 2022. At the end of 2016, Graham, his late friend Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) visited Ukrainian marines on the front lines of the Donbas war and urged them to go on the “offense” despite the Minsk Accords, the agreements meant to end the conflict.
“Your fight is our fight,” Graham told the soldiers on December 21, 2016. “2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington, and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price. Our fight is not with the Russian people but with Putin. Our promise to you is to take your cause to Washington, inform the American people of your bravery, and make the case against Putin to the world.”
Following the Russian invasion in 2022, Graham supported each escalation of US involvement in the proxy war and called several times for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Graham was also known to revel in the death of Russians and called the US military aid to Ukraine the “best money we ever spent.”
President Trump spoke with Graham after he returned from Ukraine on Saturday, just hours before his death. The president said that Graham had a “great trip” to Ukraine and seemed fine “other than being tired.” Graham’s office said that a preliminary medical examination found that he died due to an “aortic dissection.”
