By Burc Eruygur
ISTANBUL (AA) - Russia said on Monday that media attempts to justify comments made by US Senator Lindsey Graham during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Friday were “doomed to fail.”
“An attempt at justification is doomed to fail. It is already impossible to wash off such words, even if they were uttered separately,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
It said Graham is not alone in making such comments about Russians, listing statements made by various US and Ukrainian officials, including former US President George W. Bush.
“It's no secret that the Kyiv ghouls and their overseas curators not only wish the death of the Russians, but are also directly involved in murder and terrorist attacks,” the statement claimed.
The statement also questioned what would have happened if a US senator made such comments about any other nation and people, and claimed that they would not be a senator anymore and “would have been erased from public life and memory in the blink of an eye.”
“This whole story with cowardly excuses and ridiculous attempts to shield Lindsey Graham is another blow to the already faded reputation of Reuters, and the BBC, which had to get out of both Washington and Kyiv. This is not journalism, but the development by PR agencies of the order of the ‘collective West’,” the statement added.
Russia earlier announced that it placed Graham on its wanted list, according to state media reports, a day after Moscow announced it opened a criminal case against Graham over the comments he made, which it described as “Russophobic.”
During a meeting with Zelenskyy in Ukraine's capital Kyiv on Friday, Graham was recorded as saying in a video shared by the Ukrainian president’s Telegram account: “The Russians are dying. … Best money we’ve ever spent.”
In response to the video, Russian officials slammed Graham’s comments, with the Kremlin saying it is difficult “to imagine a greater shame for the country (the US) than having such senators.”