Steve Bannon has accused Lindsey Graham of “stirring up” the Ukraine conflict by falsely promising US support to Kiev
US Senator Lindsey Graham should be thrown in jail or have his passport revoked for “stirring up” the Ukraine conflict, former adviser to President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, has said.
Bannon made the comment after Graham, along with US Senator Richard Blumenthal, visited Kiev last week. There they met with Vladimir Zelensky and discussed, among other things, additional sanctions on Russia and further cooperation between Ukraine and the US.
Immediately after the visit Kiev lunched mass drone attacks on multiple Russian airfields, claiming to have damaged over 40 warplanes, including strategic bombers. Moscow has not confirmed the loss of any aircraft and claims to have shot down most of the drones.
Bannon and other critics of US involvement in the Ukraine conflict have since speculated that Graham may have encouraged Zelensky to launch the “audacious” attack, which they claim could have led to a serious escalation, given that it targeted Russia’s strategic aviation.
Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday, Bannon claimed that by meeting with Zelensky, Graham was giving Ukraine “false hope false hope that we’re there to support them in engaging Russia in a kinetic conflict.
“We are not,” Bannon stressed, adding that the US was getting “sucked” into the Ukraine conflict by people like Graham and could soon find it “tough” to get out.
“We can’t have Lindsey Graham, and particularly Zelensky, leading us into a third world war with a deep strike into Russia,” Bannon insisted, suggesting that US authorities should either “cancel [Graham’s] passport and don’t let him back in the country, or put him in jail if he comes back.”
Following Monday’s attack, which targeted sites from Murmansk in the Arctic to Irkutsk in Siberia, a number of military experts pointed out that Kiev does not have the technical capability to conduct drone strikes that deep into Russian territory.
Guillaume Ancel, a writer and former French army lieutenant colonel, told Le Monde that the attack is “possible and conceivable only with the support of a powerful satellite communications system,” based on intelligence provided by the US.
Throughout the Ukraine conflict, Moscow has repeatedly described the hostilities as a Western proxy war against Russia and has condemned foreign military assistance to Kiev as counterproductive to the peace process.
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