Senator Lindsey Graham called on Russians to carry assassinate their president Vladimir Putin.
The Republican Senator invoked a Julius Caesar-style assignation of Putin who is currently leading an invasion of Ukraine during an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity show and in a series of tweets on Thursday.
‘Is there a Brutus in Russia? he asked. ‘Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?’ he tweeted, referencing the army officer who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.
‘The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service,’ his tweet continued.
In a separate tweet Graham added that the responsibility of eliminating Putin laid solely in the hands of Russian citizens.
Senator Lindsey Graham (pictured) called on Russians to carry out the assassination of President Putin in his latest series of tweets
‘The only people who can fix this are the Russian people,’ he tweeted. ‘Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.’
Graham is not the first conservative to call for Putin’s death this week.
Earlier this week Fox News host Sean Hannity said: ‘Cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake.’
‘What we really need in this crisis, more than anything else, is a worldwide condemnation,’ Hannity said on his daytime radio show. ‘And it’s a simple new rule that if you invade an innocent sovereign country, and you kill innocent men, women and children, you don’t deserve to live. That’s the bottom line.’
‘Now currently the U.S. operates under a decades-old executive order signed by [former President] Gerald Ford that prohibits the U.S. government employees from engaging in political assassinations.
‘And I’m like, ‘You cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake. Right now the snake is Vladimir Putin,’ Hannity added.
Graham’s tweets come after Europe’s largest nuclear plant was on fire in the early hours of Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian troops.
On Thursday the Republican Senator invoked Julius Caesar-style assignation of the Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured) who is currently leading an invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of ‘nuclear terror’ and wanting to repeat the Chernobyl disaster – considered the worst nuclear disaster in history
Graham’s tweets come after Europe’s largest nuclear plant was on fire in the early hours of Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian troops
As the chaotic scenes unfolded, a Kyiv official told The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation had been detected near the site of the plant. A plant spokesman later said they remained at normal levels, and Ukraine’s 24 TV channel quoted the plant’s director as saying that ‘radiation security’ had been secured.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of ‘nuclear terror’ and wanting to repeat the Chernobyl disaster – considered the worst nuclear disaster in history.
‘You know the word ‘Chernobyl,’ he said in a video posted on Friday morning, calling on Russia to stop its attack.
‘No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units. This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror,’ he said in the video message.
President Joe Biden had spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart about the attack, while a Downing Street spokeswoman said Johnson had also spoken to Zelensky.
The spokeswoman called the situation ‘gravely concerning’, adding: ‘Both leaders agreed that Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant.
The live feed from the plant at one point appeared to show the flashing lights of emergency vehicles arriving to the scene, but their path was blocked by tanks stationed along the road leading up to the reactors.
As the conflict continues to escalate, Graham is not the only person suggesting Putin be taken care of.
Russian businessman Alex Konanykhin offered a $1 million bounty for Vladimir Putin’s arrest – by posting a ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ poster online.
Konanykhin said in posts on Facebook and LinkedIn that he would pay the money for the ‘arrest of Putin as a war criminal under international laws’
Konanykhin claimed that Putin was not the President of Russia because he ‘murdered his opponenets’.
Konanykhin, 55, is a wealthy entrepreneur who served on a Russian delegation to the US in 1992 under its then President Boris Yeltsin.
But he fell out with the Kremlin after it accused him of embezzling $8m from the Russian Exchange Bank in Moscow and he was granted asylum to stay in the US in 2007.
In the post on LinkedIn, Konanykhin wrote: ‘I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws.
‘Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents. As an ethnic Russian and a Russian citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia.
‘I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda’.
