The US Senate turned a Russia sanctions vote into a memorial for the senator who wrote it. The Senate voted by an overwhelming margin to advance a package of sanctions on Russia inspired by the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, hours after his funeral service in Washington, which Ukraine's president attended, USA Today reported.

The legislation passed the procedural vote, the first of several steps before it can become law, 86 to 12, with 11 Democrats and one Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voting against it.

Graham, who died on 11 July of an aortic rupture at 71 and was among Ukraine's most forceful allies in the US Congress, had secured President Donald Trump's support for a version of the bill before his sudden death. His sister, Darline Graham, appointed to his Senate seat, is the lead author of the legislation, now renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Washington for the funeral, watched the vote from the Senate floor.

"There is no greater way to honor Senator Graham's legacy than to move forward with this bipartisan agreement," Darline Graham and the bipartisan group of senators backing the bill said in a joint statement before the vote.

What the bill would do

The legislation is built to attack Russia's war revenue at its source. It gives the president new authority to sanction Russian officials, foreign nationals, and financial institutions tied to the country's war machine, and it requires Trump to impose a 500% tariff on all Russian imports, including Moscow's oil, petroleum, and natural gas.

The bill gives the president more power to punish ships that try to evade the energy sanctions imposed by the US and Ukraine's other partners, targeting the shadow fleet Russia uses to move oil around Western restrictions.

"This legislation is designed to cut off Vladimir Putin's most important resource in his war against Ukraine: his money," said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a co-author of the bill, on the Senate floor.

The measure also extends sanctions on Iran.

The vote was symbolic, and the path ahead is long

The vote was mainly symbolic, and the Senate was set to leave Washington on 7 August for a month. The Senate must still vote several more times to formally pass the bill.

The legislation would then also have to clear the House of Representatives, which is away until 31 August, before it can be sent to Trump. In June, the House passed its own version of a sanctions-and-Ukraine-aid package over Republican leadership, so a version exists in both chambers, but reconciling them and getting the result to the president's desk will not take place until the fall at the earliest.

Democrats objected to handing Trump tariff power

The 12 votes against the bill were accompanied by a specific complaint about whom the legislation empowers. Democrats who opposed the package said they were concerned about the tariff provisions, which would delegate too much authority to Trump.

"Essentially, this would be a wholesale delegation of Congress's tariff authority to the executive," Senator Peter Welch of Vermont said on the Senate floor.

The objection is notable because it splits the pro-Ukraine coalition not over whether to pressure Russia, but over how much unilateral power to give a president who has spent months pursuing a negotiated settlement with Moscow rather than escalating economic pressure.

Zelenskyy threaded the day between mourning and lobbying

Ukraine's president spent the day moving between the funeral, the White House, and the Senate. After a closed-door meeting with Trump at the White House, Zelenskyy went to Capitol Hill for a bipartisan meeting with senators, then watched them cast their votes, seated at one point between Senator John Barrasso, the majority whip, and Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He was one of three world leaders who came to the United States for Graham's funeral at the Washington National Cathedral. Zelenskyy called Graham a "true friend" of Ukraine in a social media post thanking the US for its firm support during more than four years of war against Russia's full-scale war.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spent an entire day in Washington amid a shortage of Patriot interceptors. The Ukrainian president met representatives of the American defense company Lockheed Martin, which makes ATACMS missiles, HIMARS rocket systems, and Patriot air-defense interceptors, during his 28 July visit to the US, he wrote on Telegram.

Zelenskyy's Washington trip layered defense-industry diplomacy over a funeral. He came for the memorial of Senator Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly on 11 July at 71 and was among Kyiv's most influential and outspoken allies in the US Congress.

On the same day, the Senate moved to advance a Russia sanctions bill, renamed the "Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026" in his honor, with a procedural vote set for Tuesday evening, at which Zelenskyy was to address senators beforehand, according to Bloomberg. Zelenskyy also met with US President Donald Trump at the White House.

The Lockheed talks are about building weapons together

Zelenskyy framed the Lockheed Martin meeting as the same joint-production effort he has been pressing across the US defense industry. He discussed further developing cooperation through joint production and technology exchange, he said.

"Ukraine has something to share with those who help us protect lives. We talked about our joint capabilities regarding Patriot and other systems," Zelenskyy wrote.

Teams are already working on concrete solutions to move to joint production as quickly as possible and increase Ukraine's ability to protect lives, he added.

The meeting pairs with several days earlier. On 22 July, Zelenskyy met a team from Raytheon, the Patriot's other manufacturer, and said Ukraine was negotiating joint production of Patriot interceptors. Meeting both Patriot makers within a week, Ukraine is pressing the companies on production, after Trump pledged at the Ankara NATO summit on 8 July to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriots, a promise the manufacturers said this month they had barely begun to act on.

The sanctions bill is the day's larger stakes

Shortly after midnight Kyiv time, Zelenskyy is expected to address US senators ahead of a procedural vote on a bipartisan bill imposing sanctions on Russia.

The legislation advancing in Graham's name is among the most consequential Russia measures the US Congress has produced. A bipartisan group of senators announced on 28 July that they had finalized the bill's language, and Senate leaders scheduled a procedural vote for that evening.

It would allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 500% on goods imported directly from Russia and up to 100% on imports from the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, as well as from countries that help Russia evade sanctions. It also targets Russian officials, oligarchs, banks, and the shadow fleet, bars Russian uranium imports, and extends Iran sanctions. With more than 60 cosponsors, it is expected to pass the Senate, though the House is in recess until 31 August, so it will not reach Trump's desk until after that.

However, the bill carries a real geopolitical cost of its own. The secondary tariffs would fall hardest on China and India, the biggest buyers of Russian energy, and the measure could strain already-unstable US trade relations with both. That is the tension built into the tribute to Graham: the bill that bears his name would squeeze Russia's war revenue by pressuring the countries that keep it flowing, at the cost of a confrontation with two of the world's largest economies.

The European Union has imposed sanctions on Georgia's Kulevi oil refinery for processing Russian crude, marking the first time Brussels has targeted a major Georgian company under its sanctions regime against Russia, according to Reuters.

The measure forms part of the EU's 21st sanctions package adopted on 24 July in response to Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine. It prohibits transactions with the refinery beginning in six months, broadening the bloc's efforts to target companies outside Russia that help sustain Moscow's oil revenues, Reuters reported.

First sanctions against a major Georgian company

Located on Georgia's Black Sea coast, the Kulevi refinery came under scrutiny after Reuters reported in October 2025 that Russian oil producer Russneft had begun supplying crude to the facility.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry said it was concerned by Kulevi's inclusion in the sanctions package but remained ready to cooperate with EU institutions and share information to ensure the country is not used to circumvent sanctions, according to Reuters.

Refinery pledges shift away from Russian crude

Earlier this month, Black Sea Petroleum said it would stop refining Russian crude from August-September and instead source oil from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The company said the switch would allow its petroleum products to access higher-value export markets.

Black Sea Petroleum reportedly processed more than 650,000 tonnes of crude during the first half of 2026. It announced a modernization partnership with US industrial technology company Honeywell and plans to begin producing road bitumen in early 2027 and aviation fuel later that year.

According to Reuters, an EU official said discussions with the refinery remain ongoing and welcomed its commitment to phase out Russian crude, while stressing that the bloc wants to see the pledge implemented before considering lifting the sanctions.

"We'll give them some credit, but we want to see... that they do what they promised, and then we can propose to the council to delist them," the official told reporters in Brussels, according to Reuters.

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Energy trade under scrutiny

Although Georgia and Russia have had no formal diplomatic relations since the 2008 war, the ruling Georgian Dream party has expanded economic ties with Moscow during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including increased imports of Russian oil.

Research by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), cited by Reuters, found that the Kulevi refinery received six shipments of Russian crude between October 2025 and May 2026. During that period, refined products from Kulevi were exported to EU member states including Spain and Bulgaria.

According to CREA's research, also cited by Reuters, the EU and the United States imported 1.46 million tonnes of oil products worth €811 million from the Kulevi port between February 2023 and February 2026.

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