Russian Propaganda Chief Calls For Assassination of Lindsey ‘Lady Graham’: ‘We Have His Address’
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian state media outlet Russia Today, called for the assassination of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday, responding to comments made by Graham during a recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During that meeting, Graham remarked that the aid the United States sent to Ukraine was the “best money we’ve ever spent.” At a different point in the conversation, he noted that the Ukrainians were “fighting to the last person” and would either “be free or die,” comparing Ukrainian resistance to the United States’ war for independence.
“Now you are free, and we will be,” replied Zelensky.
“And the Russians are dying,” observed Graham.
As the Daily Beast pointed out, that last observation of Graham’s was spliced together with his praise of aid to Ukraine on social media to make it look like he was celebrating Russian deaths rather than Ukraine’s success in defending itself. Simonyan and others in Russia expressed outrage.
“If Lady Graham really said that the money for the killing of Russians is the best money the US ever spent… I hope that in our country, the sons or grandchildren of Sudoplatov are alive, his pupils, or the descendants of his pupils. It’s not even hard. We have his address,” said Simonyan. The invocation of the surname “Sudoplatov” is a reference to Pavel Sudoplatev, a Soviet general who helped plan the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
Simonyan’s replacement of Graham’s first name with “Lady” would appear to be a reference to rumors that Graham is gay, which are often fanned by Graham’s political opponents in the United States. She finished her thought by explaining that she has “no ill will towards anyone, and our religion tells us to forgive, but no one tells us to reward these types of things. When we don’t act in response to these things, it is the same as encouraging them. It causes them to become increasingly more brazen.”
On the same program where Simonyan made her call for Graham’s assassination, host Vladimir Solovyov reacted to Graham’s comments by exlaiming that “Your dirty American money also fully supported the Nazi regime in Germany! You are a Nazi beast and you’re following in the footsteps of your predecessors. I’ll repeat it once again: you will croak, but the Russian people will live forever!”
The Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939, and the Soviet Union followed Adolf Hitler’s lead in invading Poland the following month. Hostilities between the two countries only began when Germany broke the agreement and invaded in 1941.
