The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, has been added to a list of “terrorists and extremists” kept by Russia’s state financial monitoring agency.
Tass, the state-run news agency, first reported the move by Rosfinmonitoring, which allows authorities to freeze Russian bank accounts, though in Graham’s case is likely to be chiefly symbolic.
On Tuesday afternoon, Graham tweeted sarcastically: “There goes all my rubles!”
The Rosfinmonitoring list includes more than 12,000 individuals and more than 400 companies, as well as domestic and foreign terrorist entities and Russian political opposition groups, according to the website opensanctions.org.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was reportedly added to the list in October 2022, for supposedly tolerating “Russophobia”. Its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and other Meta employees have been banned from Russia or added to “wanted” lists.
Graham, a South Carolina senator and foreign policy hawk who has long advocated arming Ukraine against Russian invaders, has also been subject to a Russian arrest warrant, for making “Russophobic statements” during a visit to Kyiv.
“It’s difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators,” Dmitry Peskov, the Russian government spokesperson, said at the time.
Graham responded to the warrant by telling Reuters: “As usual the Russia propaganda machine is hard at work. It has been a good investment by the United States to help liberate Ukraine from Russian war criminals.” He said he would “wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a badge of honour”.
Nonetheless, Graham is also a prominent ally of Trump, the former president and prospective Republican presidential nominee who is generally held to favour Russia and Putin.
This month, Graham voted against a $95bn defense and foreign aid package that would significantly boost Kyiv. On Sunday, Graham told CBS he backed a $66bn counter-proposal from House lawmakers of both parties, adding: “I want to turn the aid package into a loan, that makes perfect sense to me.”
That echoed Trump, who has demanded aid to Kyiv should be turned into loans. “I think that’s a winning combination,” Graham said. “Let’s make it a loan. I think that gets you President Trump on the aid part.”
Lamenting the killing of Alexei Navalny, the most prominent leader of opposition to Putin, who died in a Russian penal colony last week, Graham also said Russia should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism.
He repeated that charge on Tuesday, saying: “I call your ‘terrorists and extremists’ bid and raise you ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism under US law.’
“Believe it or not, 2024 is going to be a bad year for Putin’s Russia. More aid to Ukraine. More high-end weapons that can reach out and touch the Russian occupiers. Designation of Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Expansion of Nato.”
Republicans continue to seek to tie Ukraine aid to border and immigration reform, even though senators including Graham dynamited their own border deal with Democrats after Trump expressed opposition.
On Tuesday, Graham tweeted: “I understand what happens if Putin wins in Ukraine. However, many members of Congress do not seem to understand what is happening to America every single day at our southern border. Count me in for helping Ukraine. But, we must help ourselves first. It’s time to get our broken border under control.”
Speaking to the Hill, an unnamed Democratic senator bemoaned Graham’s flexible loyalties, saying: “He got sucked into the Trump orbit, and he is so zealously about his own self-preservation in South Carolina that he literally would push his mother in front of a train to get to where he needs to be.
“I hate to say it because I actually like him.”’
