(UnitedHeadlines.com) – On Feb. 20, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, 68, was added to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s list of “terrorists and extremists” following Graham’s comments about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death.
Graham was added to the list after, during a Feb. 18 interview with CBS, he stated Navalny knew that when he went back to Russia, Putin would kill him, adding that Navalny “was murdered by Putin.”
Graham responded to the news that Russia’s financial watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, had added him to the list in a post on Twitter, writing, “There goes all my rubles!” as adding Graham to the list of terrorists and extremists allows Russian authorities to freeze any Russian bank accounts Graham may have.
In the post, Graham added that 2024 would be a “bad year for Putin’s Russia.” He again called for Russia to be added as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism under U.S. law” and listed actions the U.S. should take to weaken the Kremlin, such as providing Ukraine with more and expanding NATO.
A misleading video from May 2023 was also cited by Rosfinmonitoring when announcing Graham’s addition to the list of terrorists. In the video, Graham appears to state during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that “the best money” ever spent by the United States is on “Russians dying.” However, an investigation by Newsweek revealed the comments in the video were unrelated to each other.
Over 12,000 individuals and 400 companies are also on the Rosfinmonitoring terrorist list, including Meta, which was added to the terrorist list in 2022. Also on the list or banned from Russia are Meta’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, and other employees of Meta.
This is not the first time Russia has targeted Graham. The country issued a warrant for Graham’s arrest in May 2023 when Ukraine released the misleading video. At the time, Graham responded by calling the arrest warrant a “badge of honor.”
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