Senator Graham, and other war hawks, have been publicly lobbying to "take him out."

There was an apparent drone attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence in the Valdai area of the Novgorod region, northwestern Russia, around December 29, 2025. According to Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Defense Ministry, someone launched, simultaneously, 91 long-range drones targeting the site. They state that all drones were intercepted by air defenses, with no casualties or damage reported. Russian authorities released video footage of a downed drone and claimed that analysis of its navigation controller's memory confirmed the target was Putin's residence complex. A senior Russian military official reportedly handed this evidence to a U.S. military attaché in Moscow.

The tech was American. Ukraine says they didn't launch the drones. If it was the CIA, did they inform the president or do this secretly? If it was the CIA, it was still American aggression, and by formal association, NATO aggression. How has the Russian Federation promised to respond to any and all Western aggression? See their Nuclear Doctrine of November 2024, and read Putin's public speeches of the last four years on the Kremlin website.