Granted, killing Putin would eliminate the architect of the criminal invasion of Ukraine. But we have no assurance that his replacement would reverse his military actions. We don’t even have a sound idea of who stands to inherit control of Russia or even an inkling of whether or not Putin’s absolute power would be handed down to just one new strongman. It’s conceivable that a Putin assassination would initiate a deadly, chaotic power struggle among top Kremlin and military leaders, whose outcome cannot be accurately predicted. For instance, who wants to see three or four Russian factions, each with nuclear capability, battling one another? Will one of them be authorized to make peace with the West or will we end up with several new nuclear adversaries instead of one? Never forget what followed the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the murder of Muammar Gaddafi. The death of a strongman almost never serves the remedy we seek.

It might be a different matter had Graham called for the assassination of Putin after the United States declared war on Russia. In times of absolute war, heads of state are legitimate targets. But no such state of war currently exists between our two countries. Did anybody in the U.S. Senate recommend the assassination of Nikita Khrushchev when he invaded Hungary or place an order for Leonid Brezhnev’s hide after he sent tanks into Czechoslovakia?

U.S. sponsorship of Putin’s assassination also could easily backfire if Russians interpreted his killing as an act of American escalation that would unite them in favor of new acts of counter-escalation. Russian citizens who share little affinity with Putin or his war today could become patriotic Putinites overnight.