Senate Advances Lindsey Graham Russia and Iran Sanctions Bill 86-12, With Zelensky Watching From the Floor

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Kurdistan 24) - The United States Senate voted 86 to 12 on Tuesday to advance a sweeping Russia and Iran sanctions bill hours after world leaders gathered at Washington National Cathedral to mourn the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, its most passionate champion, in a display of bipartisan unity that carried the unmistakable weight of the senator's three-decade foreign policy legacy.

As Axios reported on Tuesday, the vote came immediately after a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill between senators and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had traveled to Washington to attend Graham's funeral and remained in the chamber to watch the vote, sitting at one point between Senator John Barrasso, the majority whip, and Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The bill, now formally renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, was co-authored by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and had accumulated more than 60 co-sponsors before Tuesday's vote. Graham's sister Darline Graham, appointed to fill his Senate seat following his sudden death on July 11, 2026, is a lead sponsor of the renamed legislation. "There is no greater way to honor Senator Graham's legacy than to move forward with this bipartisan agreement," Darline Graham and a bipartisan group of senators said in a joint statement before the vote, as ABC News reported on Tuesday.

As the Spokesman-Review confirmed on Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote against the legislation, with eleven Democrats also voting no, making the 86-12 tally a striking demonstration of cross-party alignment on Russia and Iran policy at a moment when the broader political landscape in Washington has been defined by sharp partisan division.

The Hill reported on Tuesday that Senator Blumenthal, co-author of the bill, said the measure is specifically designed to punish China and India for financing Russia's war machine through continued purchases of Russian energy. "To be really blunt, China and India are the main culprits here," Blumenthal told reporters Tuesday night. "They purchase the vast majority of oil and gas. They are fueling Russia's war machine, and they are doing us no favors anywhere else in the world." Senator Wicker, speaking on the Senate floor in support of the legislation, said: "If we've learned anything about the Russian despot Vladimir Putin over the course of this war, it's that the slaughter of civilians and even his own Russian troops gives him no pause."

As ABC News confirmed on Tuesday, the legislation would impose 100 percent secondary tariffs on countries that continue buying Russian oil and gas, a measure designed to cut off the financial flows that have sustained Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine. The bill also extends and tightens sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, reinforcing Washington's financial pressure on Tehran at a moment when the US military has completed multiple consecutive nights of strikes against Iranian military targets.

The White House confirmed to USA Today that Trump supports the Senate bill, a position consistent with the late Senator Graham's own account of having secured presidential backing for the legislation in the days before his death. Graham had said after a meeting with Trump earlier this year that the president had "greenlit the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill," describing it as giving Trump "tremendous leverage against countries like China, India and Brazil to incentivize them to stop buying the cheap Russian oil that provides the financing for Putin's bloodbath against Ukraine."

Tuesday night's vote is procedural, representing the first of several steps before the legislation can become law, but the scale of the bipartisan majority and the more than 60 co-sponsors the bill has accumulated indicate it is on a clear path to final Senate passage later this week, after which it will move to the House of Representatives.

Zelensky, who was one of three world leaders to attend Graham's funeral at Washington National Cathedral, called the late senator "a true friend" of Ukraine in a social media post on Tuesday. His presence in the Senate gallery as the vote was cast added a rare ceremonial weight to a procedural moment, transforming what would otherwise have been a routine cloture vote into a public affirmation of American legislative commitment to Ukraine and to the sanctions pressure on Russia and Iran that Graham spent the final years of his life working to build.