Senator Lindsey Graham has been criticized for his call to Ukrainian lawmakers to quickly pass legislation that will draft more citizens to fight against Russia.
Visiting Kyiv, the South Carolina Republican said on Monday that Ukraine's parliament should pass a mobilization bill, as he questioned exempting men under 27 from serving.
Facing a shortage of troops, Ukraine's new mobilization law has been debated for months and proposes lowering the country's draft age to 25, but progress has been slow.
Ukrainian citizens can voluntarily join the military from 18 and men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country under martial law, but the draft has until now protected younger men from being forcibly mobilized.
Within this context, Graham expressed his concern that younger Ukrainians were not being urged to join the war given the existential fight their country was facing.
"I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join," he said. "I can't believe it's at 27."
"You're in a fight for your life, so you should be serving—not at 25 or 27," he said. "We need more people in the line," he said. Newsweek has contacted Graham's office for comment.
However, pro-Ukrainian social media users took issue with his demand to Kyiv. "Ukrainians themselves decide who will be sent to the front," posted user Poslanik Mira on X.
"For them, the main thing is high-quality weapons to effectively protect themselves from Russia."
User Mojmir Vedic called Graham's comment "a really shameful statement."
Graham's remarks also touched on continued U.S. aid for Kyiv. The U.S. Senate has approved a $95 billion funding package that contained $60 billion in aid for Kyiv but the package is stalled in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
Graham, who has voted against the deal over concerns about the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, said on Monday, "If you want aid to Ukraine, you'd better start talking to American taxpayers."
The senator said he raised the idea in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The idea, floated by the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, involves turning Ukraine aid into a "no-interest, waivable loan," in a plan under development by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, CNN reported.
In response, Eric Chenoweth, director at the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, posted on X: "Graham interferes with the carrying out of US foreign policy by negotiating directly with Zelensky.
"He undermines a sitting president on behalf of a former president promising to abandon Ukraine if re-elected. Again: we haven't grappled w/ the success of Russian active measures."
Graham criticized slow deliveries of U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) saying they "should have been here yesterday," so that Ukrainian force could "knock the damn bridge down linking Crimea to Russia."
The X account of Senate Democrats posted: "Senator Graham needs to fix his position and join us in urging the House to pass the bipartisan national security supplemental that he opposed on the Senate floor."
Last week, Politico reported that the U.S. would send additional ATACMS to Ukraine as part of a $300 million package, according to two U.S. officials. Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Luke Coffey said that the missiles are needed to hit the occupied peninsula.
"However, if media reports are accurate, the situation is not as optimistic as it might first seem," Coffey told Newsweek. "While the 100-mile range variant of ATACMS is welcome, the Ukrainians need the longer 190-mile range missile."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
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