Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, who has died suddenly aged 71, had just returned from Kyiv after a meeting with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It was Graham’s 10th visit since the 2022 Russian invasion; Zelenskyy, who came away with promises of the aid that had been on and off with the Trump administration, called him a “true defender of freedom”.
It was a good demonstration of both Graham’s firm stance on US power overseas, and his opposition to Russia. “Putin will not stop in Ukraine,” he said. “To be weak in Ukraine means you lose in Taiwan.”
