The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia has put US Senator Lindsey Graham on the wanted list, Russian media reported on Monday, citing the agency’s database, Reuters reports.

The move came after the Ukrainian president’s office released video of a meeting between Graham and Volodymyr Zelenskyi and other leaders in Kyiv, in which the US senator said “Russians are dying” because of US military support for Ukraine.

“This is the best way I’ve ever spent money,” Graham said, referring to the massive losses suffered by the Russian military during the “special military operation” launched by Vladimir Putin last year.

His comments provoked an angry reaction from Moscow, and the Kremlin, through its press secretary Dmitry Peskov, said that “it is difficult to imagine a greater shame for the country than having such senators.”

For his part, former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described Graham, 67, as a “crazy old man.”

Medvedev suggested in March this year that the US senator may have been the victim of a plane crash after Graham called for a tough US response to the crash of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone into the Black Sea after colliding with a Russian fighter jet. who tried to pursue her.

Who is Lindsey Graham?

The inclusion of the American senator in the list of those wanted by Russia took place after the Investigative Committee of Moscow announced on Sunday the opening of criminal proceedings based on his comments during a meeting with the President of Ukraine.

The Russian authorities have not specified what crime he is suspected of.

Graham dismissed Moscow’s sharp reaction, saying a day earlier that he was simply praising the spirit of Ukrainians in resisting the Russian invasion with help from Washington to Kyiv.

Lindsey Graham is a Washington congressional senator from the state of South Carolina, part of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, known for its interventionist positions on foreign policy.

Graham is one of the longest-serving Republican lawmakers in Congress, first elected to a term in 1993 when he ran for the House of Representatives. After 4 terms in the lower house of the American legislature, he was elected to the Senate.

Graham was a close associate and friend of former US Senator John McCain, also a neoconservative Republican. Graham’s name has been floated for a top job in former Republican President Donald Trump’s administration for some time, despite their differences on foreign policy.

In the end, Trump did not select him for a position in his cabinet, and Graham became a sharp critic of his policies, despite the support offered in the first part of the mandate.