American Senator Lindsey Graham said shortly before his death that it was necessary to finish work on a bill introducing new sanctions against Russia. Axios reported this, citing a person who spoke with the senator a few hours before his death.

According to the source, the conversation took place on July 11. During the conversation, Graham admitted that he was feeling unwell. The person he was speaking with advised him to seek medical help immediately, but the senator replied that he planned to do so the next morning after a scheduled appearance on NBC.

According to the Axios source, Graham then joked: “I can’t die right now. I still need to impose sanctions on Russia, deal with Iran, and normalize Israeli-Saudi relations.”

The publication notes that these words became some of the senator’s last publicly known remarks before his death.