Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, has died at the age of 71.
His office released a statement saying he died on Saturday evening following “a brief and sudden illness”, adding that Graham’s family had asked for “privacy during this incredibly difficult period”.
Elected to the Senate in 2002, the South Carolina politician was one of Washington’s most influential voices on foreign policy.
He had just returned from Kyiv, where he met the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. There were no known health concerns ahead of his trip.
In a social media post marking the senator’s death, US President Donald Trump said Graham was a “true American Patriot”.
Graham also served as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
He was a strong proponent of US support for Ukraine. In his most recent trip to the country, Graham was working on a version of the Russia sanctions bill, which he said would give “tools to President Trump to end this war”.
“Putin will not stop in Ukraine,” he told the BBC in 2023. “To be weak in Ukraine means that you lose in Taiwan.”
Graham initially clashed with the US president.
He told CNN in 2015 that Trump was “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”, and during the 2016 campaign he posted on social media: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”
After the US Capitol riots in 2021, Graham gave a speech on the Senate floor in which he said: “Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way.
(Editor: Nkoli Omhoudu)
