The US Senate passed a broad sanctions bill targeting Russia's energy industry and Iran, after the measure had been stuck in Congress for months.
The U.S. Senate advanced a Russia and Iran sanctions bill named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham by an 86-vote margin, turning a negotiated deal into a concrete legislative step toward final passage.
The US Senate is holding an actual floor vote on a sanctions bill that could impose tariffs up to 500 percent on countries still buying Russian or Iranian oil.
A bipartisan group of US senators has agreed to push forward a bill that would let the government sanction any country or company that buys oil or gas from Russia or Iran, not just Russia and Iran themselves.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet President Trump at the White House this week, then attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Senate voice for arming Ukraine.
A week ago the question was whether Graham's signature Russia bill could survive without him. The answer is arriving fast: Trump and Thune have taken it up as a memorial, and a Graham will keep sitting in the Senate.
Volodymyr Zelensky's cabinet reshuffle was already reshaping Kyiv's wartime strategy. Then Lindsey Graham, the sanctions bill's chief architect in the Senate, died hours after his last visit to the Ukrainian capital.
Russian strikes on Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson and Ukrainian drone attacks into Russia and occupied Zaporizhzhia killed nine people overnight. The exchange came as the US senator who spent a year fighting to pass a Russia sanctions bill died hours after finally securing a White House deal to move it — leaving its next steps unclear just as Kyiv called the legislation essential leverage.
Lindsey Graham died a day after his last visit to Kyiv, leaving his "sanctions from hell" Russia bill without its author at the moment it might pass. The tributes framing his support for Ukraine, trans-Atlantic ties and Israel double as a map of what Washington's allies just lost.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, a driving force behind the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill and one of Congress's most influential voices on Ukraine, has died at 71. His death leaves the legislation's most visible champion gone just as it heads toward a vote.
Senator Lindsey Graham says the White House has agreed to a version of his Russia sanctions bill, clearing the way for a Senate vote and threatening 500 percent tariffs on countries that keep buying Russian energy. The announcement lands the same week Turkey's foreign minister says Washington is moving to lift its own sanctions on Ankara — a reminder that in this administration, sanctions are less a fixed wall than a lever.