Graham warns of Middle East nuke race, Taiwan doom if Putin wins

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Ukrainian president urges U.S. congressional action

Lindsey Graham reacts to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to the U.S. Congress, on 'Jesse Watters Primetime'

America's rivals will be more emboldened if Ukraine can't fend off Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempt to reconstitute the former Soviet state, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told "Jesse Watters Primetime."

Graham warned Wednesday that President Biden has been consistently late to offer the support Kyiv needs, as evidenced by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's pleas to Congress during a speech earlier in the day.

"The bravest people on the planet are the Ukrainian people. They have rejected living under Putin's Russia because they don't want to live under a murderous dictator," he said. "They don't want to go back to the good old days of the Soviet Union."

Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

"They're in the streets. Grandmothers have rifles," he said. "They're rising to the occasion. The military equipment we're giving them now, we should have gave them six months ago — so if somebody is knocking on your door and says, Joe Biden's outside, he's here to help you, that's not a good thing."

Biden is "late to the game," Graham said, reiterating Republican urgings that Biden green-light the transfer of MiG fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine.

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(AP/Reuters/Reuters)

"The air defense systems that we're talking about should have been delivered months ago, and they're still not there."

If Putin succeeds, Iran, China and other nefarious world actors will only grow stronger against the West, Graham said, adding that despite being a "hawkish guy" in the Senate, Ukrainians can win without American boots or a NATO-enforced "no-fly-zone," or other actions that could trigger Article V.

There is no need for direct NATO intervention or American military on the ground, he said, but if the United States fails to support Zelenskyy, "China will take Taiwan and the Iranians will sprint toward a nuclear weapon."

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a virtual address to the U.S Congress. (Drew Angerer/Pool via REUTERS)

"And then, every problem you name gets worse," he told host Jesse Watters.

"The war criminal [would] still be standing. The Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] will sprint to a nuclear weapon in Iran, believing that's an insurance policy — and all the Arabs are going to want their own nuclear weapon. You have a nuclear arms race in the Mid-East. So every problem we have today is made worse by Putin."