WASHINGTON (CNBC) - Senior U.S. senator Lindsey Graham called for “somebody in Russia” to assassinate President Vladimir Putin after Moscow’s operation in Ukraine in a televised interview Thursday evening.
“How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate... and take this guy out,” the senator told conservative Fox News TV host Sean Hannity.
He repeated the call later in a series of tweets, saying “the only people who can fix this are the Russian people.”
“Is there a Brutus in Russia?” asked the senator, referring to one of Roman ruler Julius Caesar’s assassins.
The former presidential candidate also wondered if “a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg” existed in the Russian military, alluding to the German officer whose bomb failed to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.
“You would be doing your country -- and the world -- a great service,” he added.
The senator, who has served in congress for over twenty years and has at times been a close ally to former president Donald Trump, had earlier in the day introduced a resolution condemning the Russian president and his military commanders for committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”
And Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov called the comments “criminal,” and “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Even after that pushback from his own party, Graham stood by the comments on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, calling for Russians to “rise up and take [Putin] down.” He responded by accusing Antonov of “supporting a war criminal in Putin.”