[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Conspiracy to commit murder is not a capital crime in the US state of South Carolina unless the murder plan has twelve aggravating circumstances [3].
Incitement to genocide is a crime in the state, though it, too, is not punishable by death. Five years in prison is the standard sentence for both, plus fines of between $5,000 and $500,000 [4].
Lindsey Graham, the four-term senator representing South Carolina, suffered the death penalty on the evening of July 11; he had not been convicted of a crime in his state. The war crimes he conspired to direct and finance, and the genocide against the Palestinian, Iranian and Russian nations he signed his name to, live on without him as the policy of the Trump Administration.
There have been press reports in Moscow that Graham was executed by a Russian missile attack on the Skyfall drone factory which he and Vladimir Zelensky toured together in Kiev on July 10 [5]. In South Carolina, the convicted have the option to die by firing squad, electric chair, and lethal injection; bombing isn’t an option.
According to a Tsargrad report [6], there wasn’t time for Graham to catch the train out of Kiev to Poland (11 hours), then a plane to Washington (11 hours), land alive, and then die a few hours later into the Washington evening, purportedly of aorta dissection. The Russian report claims Graham was already dead on arrival in Washington. The rupted aorta reportedly is a fabrication to cover up the embarrassment to the Trump Administration of a successful assassination by President Vladimir Putin. Why Graham died but Zelensky survived the missile strike isn’t explained.
“There is one marker that can clarify a lot,” Tsargrad editorialised [6]. “You need to monitor the funeral. If the terrorist senator is buried in a closed coffin, the funeral ceremony is not public, or he is quietly cremated in a private crematorium, this will dramatically increase the weight of the ‘kinetic hypothesis’, transferring it from the category of ‘this is a puerile fantasy’ to the category of ‘these things happen’.”
President Putin and his spokesmen have said nothing about Graham. As for the targeting of military industry and drone factory targets in Kiev, Putin has been precise. On Monday, July 13 [7] – when Graham was either dead of natural causes or Russian ones – Putin told an election rally that “our responses will always be mirrored, wherever they try to strike at the territory of Russia, we will respond in a mirror, only several times more powerful. The enemy will feel it. He already feels it, I hope, and he will feel it several times more powerfully.”
Assassination of individual targets is terrorism, “pure terrorism”, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared the next day (July 14). Speaking in Moscow, Lavrov was asked about US-guided Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian shipping [8]: “Moscow – and the President in particular – is working to put an end to all of this. What the Ukrainian regime is doing goes beyond piracy. At least pirates plunder for their own gain. Here, however, it benefits no one. The sole purpose is simply to cause damage and spread fear. It’s pure terrorism which manifests itself not only in the Sea of Azov but also in the Black Sea and Africa.”
Killing Graham hypothetically – collateral damage for a decapitation strike aimed at Zelensky – that has been ruled out by Putin’s mirror. Decapitation strikes by the US and Ukrainians against Russian General Staff officers as they leave their homes in Moscow – that’s “pure terrorism” by the enemy, and Putin “is working to put an end to all of this.”
Exactly how – that is the point of the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid aired live on Tuesday (July 14). Click to view or listen here [9].
For the moment, Putin is insisting that the war to defend Russia from the US, the NATO allies, and the Ukraine must be conducted as a special military operation according to mirror matching, escalation symmetry, and deterrence by red lines announced in public and demonstration firings, like the three Oreshnik shots [10] – Dniepropetrovsk (November 2024), Lvov (January 2026), and Belaya Tserkov (May 2026).
Moscow sources report the assessment of both intelligence agencies, SVR and GRU, is that Putin’s escalation limits cannot counter, do not stop, and fail to deter the escalation of the drone war on the Ukrainian battlefield, the Russian hinterland, the territorial waters and the high seas [11]. They add that the western allies are calling Putin’s bluff.
The sources claim it is now the recommendation of the General Staff, the Defense Ministry, and the majority of the Security Council that Putin should drop the mirror, decide on asymmetrical measures, and authorize endgame escalation. “That decision is days away”, one of the sources said over the weekend.
The source believes the Russian military are now staking their honour on this decision because the alternative is “too little too late”, and “defeat by a thousand cuts.” Such a defeat is dishonour – “in practice, the Kremlin has only one option now.”