“Someone in Russia has to put their feet up (…) and get rid of this guy,” said the Republican senator during a television broadcast. He then drove home the point in a series of tweets, adding that “the only ones who can fix this are the Russians.”

“Is there a Brutus in Russia?” asked Mr. Graham, referring to one of the assassins of the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar.

He also wondered if there existed within the Russian army “a colonel Stauffenberg, but more effective”, referring to the German officer Claus von Stauffenberg, author of a failed bomb attack against Adolf Hitler in 1944. “You would be doing a great service to your country and to the rest of the world,” he added.

Lindsey Graham, who was a close ally of ex-President Donald Trump, introduced a Senate resolution on Friday condemning the Russian president and his military leaders accusing them of committing ‘war crimes and ‘crimes against humanity “.