With the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was widely viewed in Moscow as the toughest voice against Russia in U.S. politics, some pro-Kremlin officials and commentators are now hoping to gain new advantage in Washington and especially in the Trump White House.
The South Carolina Republican has carried the reputation as the toughest Russia hawk in Washington since the 2018 death of his close friend and Senate ally John McCain (R-Arizona). McCain called Russia a “gas station masquerading as a country” and referred repeatedly to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “thug” and “killer.”
Graham died over the weekend in Washington shortly after returning from a visit to Kyiv where he boasted of his success in pushing a new package of sanctions against Russia aimed at ending the war.
In Russia, reaction to Graham’s death focused on the possibility that the tone against Moscow might soften notably as a result of his absence as well as that of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R — Kentucky), who has been out of work for about a month because of illness.
In the op-eds and television commentary that poured in after news of Graham’s sudden death, there was a fair share of vitriol and conspiracy theories but also hope that it could shift the tide of Western perception about the war, which in recent weeks has seemed to tilt in Ukraine’s favor.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov, posting on social media, called Graham a “Russophobia maniac who did everything in his power to ensure the war in Ukraine dragged on.”
“He bears immense responsibility for the deaths of half a million Ukrainians and thousands of Russians,” Markov wrote, repeating a popular Kremlin talking point blaming the West for prolonging the war.
“He was an ally and close associate of Trump and constantly tempted Trump with vicious Russophobia,” Markov added.
Graham was not always as pointed as McCain in his criticism, but he had consistently taken an anti-Russian line since the early 2010s, when he criticized Russia over its 2008 war in Georgia and called Moscow a threat to young democracies.
Following Russia’s invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Graham criticized the Obama administration for not pushing back harder on Putin and for not supplying Kyiv with enough weapons.
Graham’s trip late last week to Kyiv, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was his 10th visit to the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia placed Graham on its list of terrorists and extremists, along with al-Qaeda, in 2023 over remarks that made it seem that Graham was celebrating Russian deaths as a good return on investment in Ukraine.
The incident traces back to a meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv, where he called U.S. military aid to Ukraine “the best money we’ve ever spent” and, separately, remarked that “the Russians are dying.”
Ukraine’s presidential office released an edited clip splicing the two remarks together, but the unedited footage later released by Reuters showed the comments came roughly 45 seconds apart — in different parts of the conversation.
Grigory Karasin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the death of any individual “evokes feelings of condolence and compassion regardless of their political stance.”
“However, judging by the policies championed by this American senator,” Karasin said, “he contributed little of a positive nature to relations between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.”
Karasin added that Graham’s rhetoric had hindered progress in Russian-American relations.
The response on Russian state media was not so measured. Across political talk shows and newspaper op-eds, commentators spread conspiracy theories suggesting Ukraine was somehow behind his death, along with thinly veiled jubilation about his demise and speculation about Graham’s personal life.
Graham, who died at the age of 71, had never married.
State television host Vladimir Solovyov opened the Sunday evening broadcast of his flagship show by announcing the senator’s death and said several times in under two minutes that “he croaked.”
“He croaked suddenly. Just yesterday, he was in Kyiv, gleefully threatening all Russians with death and calling for terrible sanctions against us. He flew back to America and croaked — suddenly,” Solovyov said.
“I don’t know why he croaked. Supposedly a heart attack. Maybe he felt he wasn’t getting enough money and hinted to Zelensky that his services were worth more,” Solovyov continued.
“Or maybe he knew too much? Because he was, of course, deeply involved in all the corruption schemes. But he croaked,” he said, adding: “It’s a pity he’s the only one.”
Across the globe and the political spectrum, skeptics and provocateurs floated their own theories about Graham’s death.
Moscow was hit with one, too, with some Western commentators pointing out that Graham died hours after returning from Ukraine and pointing to the Russian security services’ track record of poisoning those they consider enemies of the state, at home and abroad.
That theory was put to Trump by a Newsmax anchor during a late Monday broadcast, with host Greg Kelly asking whether Trump suspected Russian involvement.
“I’d love to say yes but I think he had some problems, and his father died just about the same age,” Trump said in response — a comment later aired widely on Russian state television news programs.
An op-ed in a Russian business daily Vzglyad expressed cautious hope that Graham’s death would bring “a slight reduction in the level of unhinged Russophobia and madness emanating from the US.”
“It means a decline in the lobbying power of those who capitalized on this madness to score political points,” the op-ed read. “It represents a step — albeit a small one — toward sobriety, reason, and the hope that American foreign policy will be less driven by the ideas of figures like Lindsey Graham.”
Whether those hopes will be realized to any degree remains an open question.
Trump said Monday evening that the administration was “thinking about” whether to sign the package of harsh anti-Russia sanctions Graham had spent years trying to push across the finish line, a comment that came after CNN reported that the president had decided to support the legislation.
The Senate had, on several occasions, come close to advancing the bill, only to see it held back repeatedly as Trump sought room to pursue peace talks with Putin.
In his final days, Graham, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), pushed hard for the bipartisan sanctions package — informally dubbed the “sanctions from hell” bill. In Kyiv, Graham announced that they had reached a deal with the White House to move the legislation forward.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said that, in Graham’s final days, the sanctions package was “the thing that he cared the most about in terms of an accomplishment, and it would certainly be an incredible legacy for him.”
Other senators have rallied around the revised bill to honor Graham, with Thune calling its passage “a great tribute to the legacy of Lindsey.”
The package would allow Trump to impose heavy tariffs on imports from countries that import Russian oil, uranium and natural gas, with possible exceptions for countries that aid the Ukrainian war effort.
In its original concept, the bill sought to impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on countries, including China, that continue purchasing Russian oil and gas.
Even in a diluted form, such measures would land at a moment when Russia’s war economy is already under strain.
Russian oil and gas revenue — with oil seeing a temporary boom during the several months of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran — have taken a hit from post-invasion sanctions in recent years.
To compensate for the losses, Moscow has leaned more heavily on domestic borrowing and higher taxes to keep the budget afloat. Sanctions that squeeze the buyers of Russian energy would tighten a funding stream the Kremlin already is struggling to backfill.
Evgeny Popov, a television anchor and member of the Russian parliament, called Graham “the fiercest Moscow-hater on Capitol Hill” and argued that his death would not affect “the bipartisan anti-Russian consensus” in Washington.
“There’s no shortage of people in Congress ready to pick up the banner,” Popov wrote on Telegram. “The old wave of Russophobes has run its course but the new one is no softer — [they have] zero pragmatism.”
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