diff --git a/CHANGELOG.asciidoc b/CHANGELOG.asciidoc
index 4c1a25fc077..7d347a0b450 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.asciidoc
+++ b/CHANGELOG.asciidoc
@@ -41,6 +41,7 @@ image::https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/tinkerpop/master/docs/static/ima
 * Deprecated and removed functionality of the `connectOnStartup` option in `gremlin-javascript` to resolve potential `unhandledRejection` and race conditions.
 * Fixed potential `NullPointerException` in `gremlin-driver` where initialization of a `ConnectionPool` would fail but not throw an exception due to centralized error check being satisfied by a different process.
 * Fixed a bug where the JavaScript client would hang indefinitely on traversals if the connection to the server was terminated.
+* Fixed Traversal.graph is empty in StepStrategy.apply() with `count().is(0)`.
 
 [[release-3-5-3]]
 === TinkerPop 3.5.3 (Release Date: April 4, 2022)
diff --git a/gremlin-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tinkerpop/gremlin/process/traversal/strategy/optimization/CountStrategy.java b/gremlin-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tinkerpop/gremlin/process/traversal/strategy/optimization/CountStrategy.java
index 3def9691473..d0832f68e1b 100644
--- a/gremlin-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tinkerpop/gremlin/process/traversal/strategy/optimization/CountStrategy.java
+++ b/gremlin-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tinkerpop/gremlin/process/traversal/strategy/optimization/CountStrategy.java
@@ -164,6 +164,7 @@ public void apply(final Traversal.Admin<?, ?> traversal) {
                                 } else {
                                     inner = __.identity().asAdmin();
                                 }
+                                traversal.getGraph().ifPresent(graph -> inner.setGraph(graph));
                                 if (prev != null)
                                     TraversalHelper.replaceStep(prev, new NotStep<>(traversal, inner), traversal);
                                 else