US Senator repeats calls for Putin to be assassinated

A US Senator repeated his call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be assassinated, comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

"Yeah, I hope he'll be taken out, one way or the other ... don't care how they take him out," Senator Lindsey Graham told journalists.

He further added that if John McCain were still alive, he would have supported him, as he was an avid critic of Russia.

"If John McCain were here, he'd be saying the same thing, I think. It's time for him to go. He's a war criminal. I wish somebody had taken Hitler out in the [1930s]," he said. 

Graham had called for Putin's assassination for the first time not two weeks ago. During a TV interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Graham expressed that the solution to the Ukraine crisis is simple. Someone in Russia should "step up to the plate... and take this guy out."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov presented a note of protest to the US Ambassador in Moscow John Sullivan over Graham's statement. The ministry said at the time that "it was stressed that we are talking about a public - essentially terrorist - call, which is absolutely unacceptable for a senior elected official."