Hours before his sudden death, Senator Lindsey Graham returned to Washington from his 10th wartime trip to Ukraine, the latest visit in a four-year campaign he had waged to persuade Americans, often including his close ally President Trump, to treat that country’s fight against Russia as their own.
Since the war began, the South Carolina Republican had been among a small group of senators whose trips to Kyiv had mirrored those often undertaken by senior diplomatic officials within the administration.
He met repeatedly with President Volodymyr Zelensky, toured towns and communities that had been reduced to rubble by Russian bombardment, and would return to Washington with fresh zeal and firsthand accounts of the war as he pressed fellow Republicans to sustain military and economic support.
Mr. Graham’s death leaves Ukraine without its most influential champion inside Mr. Trump’s political orbit. He was one of the few lawmakers who had both an unwavering belief in a muscular American role abroad and a direct line to the president. It was a rare combination in the era of Mr. Trump, who has surrounded himself with advisers keen on withdrawing from the global stage in favor of a more inward-looking, “America-first” approach to foreign policy.
Mr. Graham was not alone among Republicans in his support for Ukraine, and he almost always deferred when the president resisted supporting the nation’s battle for survival. But his closeness with Mr. Trump gave him a unique perch that he used to urge an often reluctant president to confront Russia directly and to ensure Ukraine had the weapons and resources it needed to continue fighting.
He was doing so in the hours before he died, reaching what he said was a breakthrough with fellow senators in both parties and the White House to impose harsh new sanctions on Russia.
“I’ve never been more optimistic today that we have the formula to end this war,” Mr. Graham said during a news conference in Kyiv on Friday before traveling back to Washington.
Mr. Graham’s commitment to Ukraine was rooted in a worldview he embraced throughout his career. A military lawyer stationed in West Germany during the final years of the Cold War, he often described himself as “a Ronald Reagan Republican,” arguing that the United States should shape world events according to its values rather than retreating from them.
Alongside his close friend Senator John McCain, who died in 2018, he became one of Congress’s leading defenders of the trans-Atlantic alliance and an interventionist foreign policy hawk, warning repeatedly that American disengagement would embolden authoritarian adversaries.
“When America leads, the world is safer,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor last May. “When we disengage and when we retreat, like we saw for the last four years under the Biden administration, chaos fills the void.”
His focus on Ukraine far predated Russia’s full-scale invasion. After Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr. Graham was as an early advocate for providing Ukraine with defensive weapons, arguing that helping Kyiv resist Russian aggression was both a strategic necessity and a moral obligation.
“If Putin’s actions in Crimea are permitted, it will set a dangerous global precedent that will damage international stability and U.S. national security interests,” he said in a statement at the time, along with former Senator Kelly Ayotte. “The U.S., working with our international partners, must make clear that Putin will incur increasingly severe diplomatic and economic consequences if he does not end his aggression in Ukraine.”
His support was often paired with public criticism of Democratic administrations that he said had created the conditions for authoritarian leaders such as President Vladimir V. Putin to act with impunity.
“Putin basically came to the conclusion after Benghazi, Syria, Egypt — everything Obama has been engaged in — he’s a weak indecisive leader,” Mr. Graham wrote in a social media post in 2014.
Through a number of administrations, and as control of Congress changed partisan hands, Mr. Graham remained one of the Senate’s most consistent voices pressing administrations of both parties to move faster on a number of military aid packages and foreign assistance programs.
When Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year for his second term, Mr. Graham ascended to an important, if often informal, role as an intermediary between Kyiv and the White House. Before the explosive Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky earlier this year, Mr. Graham met privately with the Ukrainian president in an effort to smooth tensions and encourage a productive meeting.
In the months that followed, he continued speaking with both leaders, attempting to bridge deep disagreements over military aid and negotiations even as the administration adopted a more skeptical posture toward Ukraine.
During a meeting with Mr. Zelesnky in Kyiv last week, his influence was noted after Mr. Trump announced a pledge to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air-defense systems.
Mr. Zelesnky told Mr. Graham that it was a “positive signal” and “very important.”
Mr. Trump, who said Sunday that he had spoken with Mr. Graham shortly before his death, described the senator as tired after returning from Ukraine but praised him as one of his closest advisers.
“He was a very strong military person,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on CNN after the announcement of Mr. Graham’s death.
In mourning Mr. Graham, Mr. Zelensky recalled not only his repeated visits but his steadfast support throughout the war, describing him as a true friend of Ukraine who never stopped advocating for the country’s freedom.
“We will always be especially grateful for the recognition of our people and words of admiration for the courage of Ukraine’s defenders,” Mr. Zelensky said in a statement. “America and the world have lost a determined leader.”
