MOSCOW: Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham, a top US Senator after an edited video surfaced showing him celebrating the deaths of Russian troops.
Following their Friday meeting in Kyiv, the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky posted the video, which combined two different moments.
Senator Graham referred to it as “the best money we’ve ever spent” and said that the Russian troops were “dying” while praising the assistance given to Kyiv.
According to the BBC, the senior lawmaker believed he would wear the warrant as a “Badge of Honour”.
“It brings me immense pleasure to know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime, ” Senator Graham said in a Twitter post on Monday. “I will continue to stand firmly for Ukraine and its freedom until every Russian soldier is pushed back from the territory of Ukraine.”
He said, “Here’s an offer to my Russian ‘friends’ who want to detain and prosecute me because I called the Putin regime war criminals: if you do, I will submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”
Ukraine posted the entire unedited tape to social media on Sunday in response to Moscow’s criticism of Senator Graham’s remarks last week, which included Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that “it’s hard to imagine a greater shame for the country than having such senators.”
The video proved that Senator Graham made the remarks in two different meetings, which President Zelensky’s staff later manipulated to look right after one another. In the first footage, he praised the US military assistance to Ukraine as “the best money we’ve ever spent” to contribute to the country’s ability to fight Russian advances.
Later, in a different, separate tape, he noted that initially, many people thought Ukraine would survive Moscow’s assault after just three days, observing that, in contrast, “the Russians are dying.”
However, the foreign ministry in Russia accused Kyiv of trying to protect Senator Graham from criticism and asked him to state if his words were taken out of context publicly.
Russia’s interior ministry, which put him on the wanted list, did not mention what crimes Senator Graham had committed.
The Investigative Committee in Moscow, a federal law enforcement body comparable to the FBI in the US, announced last week that it had opened an investigation into “the American senator’s rhetoric regarding the killing of Russians.”
Graham incited ire in Moscow last year by advocating for the murder of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He asserted on Twitter that “someone in Russia taking this guy out” would end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 67-year-old is, however, also closely associated with Donald Trump, a former US president, whose own statements regarding aid to Ukraine have been murky.
