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.

US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Ukraine's most consistent Senate ally, died on 11 July after a short and sudden illness, according to a statement on Graham's official X account. He was 71. 

His last foreign visit was to Kyiv on 10 July, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the US-Ukraine cooperation on Ukrainian drone production. Graham said it would be a "huge mistake" for the US not to develop cooperation with Ukraine in this area.

Graham unveiled the tariff legislation in January 2026 alongside President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One, describing it as a tool that would allow the president to impose tariffs ranging from 0 to 500 percent on any nation buying Russian crude.

The bill previously secured commitment from 72 senators. Sanctions were among the issues Graham discussed with Zelenskyy on 10 July, at a moment when Ukrainian strikes have taken over 40 percent of Russian oil refining capacity offline. Passage would give the sanctions maximum leverage.

Graham built his record in Ukraine over more than a decade. He was one of the few US senators who insisted on sanctions against Russia after Russia's 2008 war on Georgia. That initiative did not gain wide support, according to the BBC. 

After Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, Graham publicly diverged from the Obama administration's Ukraine policy.

"The Obama Administration would not provide the Ukrainian government the weapons it needed to continue the fight. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and our NATO allies sold Ukraine out. Putin is winning, we are losing," Graham said.

Graham built his Ukraine record over multiple Kyiv visits

Graham has made multiple visits to Kyiv since Russia's full-scale war in 2022. In July 2022, he and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal made their first wartime visit to Kyiv, visiting bombed Borodianka and Bucha.

Anton Herashchenko, who accompanied the visit as adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, remembered "tears in the eyes of Lindsey and Richard when they looked at photos of victims of Russian killers."

"Lindsey clearly understood that the interests of the US are the maximum weakening of Putin. Therefore, he used all his influence so that Ukraine received Patriot, F-16, ATACMS, and much more powerful American weapons," Herashchenko wrote.

Graham returned to Kyiv with Blumenthal on 30 May 2025 to promote the tariff bill and reaffirm bipartisan support for Ukraine.

Graham's role during the Trump-Zelenskyy tensions of 2025 was complicated. After the 28 February Oval Office confrontation between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vice President JD Vance, Graham called for Zelenskyy's resignation. Zelenskyy rejected the demand.

But by November 2025, as Trump-brokered peace talks intensified, Graham warned that any Ukrainian surrender to Putin would "haunt us all."

He continued to advocate for Ukraine within the Trump team, even during the coldest moments of the Trump-Zelenskyy relationship.

Graham was Washington's fiercest anti-Putin voice in Republican politics. His death leaves the 500% tariff bill without its principal Senate architect at the moment his announcement suggested it might finally pass.