Trump assassination suspect tried to help Ukraine fight Russia

Ryan Routh, identified as a suspect in an assassination attempt against Trump, was rejected by the Ukrainian international legion due to a lack of military experience.

Ryan Routh, the man named in multiple media reports as a suspect in an apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Sunday, was one of thousands of foreign volunteers who flocked to Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

However, upon arriving in the Polish border town of Medyka, he presented himself at the office of the Ukrainian International Legion, only to be turned away. “They said, ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no experience,’” Routh, speaking from Hawaii, said in an interview with Financial Times last year. “So why don’t you recruit and coordinate?”

On Sunday, law enforcement officials arrested a man they said was hiding in bushes near Trump International Golf Club in Florida. They found an AK-47-style rifle with a scope, two backpacks and a GoPro camera in the bushes. U.S. and international media widely identified the man as Routh.

The 58-year-old’s past views and political activity are now being investigated for clues as to the possible motivation for an attack on the US presidential candidate.

After his rejection by Ukrainian forces, Routh, who had previously worked in construction and lived in Hawaii, went to Kiev “to coordinate volunteers”, setting up a tent on Maidan Square in the centre of the capital.

There, often seen wearing a T-shirt with red, white and blue stars, stripes, he hung flags on a wooden board for each country that had civilian volunteers fighting alongside Ukraine. “My initial goal was to promote the foreign fighters and the foreigners who were there sacrificing their time, energy and lives to support Ukraine,” he said. “I wanted to put up flags for them.”

He also hung leaflets around Kiev’s central square offering $1,200 to foreigners who would take up arms against Russia. The contact information on the leaflets was his own, and military recruiters at the time said he had no official connection to Ukraine’s growing international legion.

Tens of thousands of foreigners poured into Ukraine in the first months of the Russian invasion after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a public appeal to “citizens of the world, friends of Ukraine, peace and democracy” to help his country fight a much larger and better equipped enemy.

But most of those who arrived in Kiev were not seasoned former NATO soldiers; they were like Routh, with no military experience and uncertain how to navigate a foreign country.

Mr. Routh was also rejected by an International Legion unit attached to Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, the GUR, said a person who knew him and was once associated with that unit. The person described Mr. Routh as “a bit too much” for them and the Legion, citing his erratic behavior. The International Legion of Ukraine declined to comment.

In his conversation with the FTRouth described a series of disagreements with Ukrainian police, city officials and others over the installation of the makeshift memorial and tent on the Maidan.

“The police destroyed [o memorial de madeira] and said, ‘You can’t do that here,'” Routh said. He then moved the memorial to a nearby location and also set up a makeshift “Flags of the Fallen” memorial, featuring paper flags honoring Ukrainians who died in the war, which still stands at the site to this day.

The American also told the FT who was working to bring back thousands of Afghan troops who fled the country after the Taliban took power in 2021 to fight alongside Kiev. “We have 20,000 Afghan troops sitting around doing nothing,” Routh said, and they could be recruited to fight “so this war doesn’t drag on for years.”

O FT was unable to independently verify that claim at the time. A person who knew Routh in Kiev said Monday that he maintained “a database” of Afghan soldiers, but that his plan was considered fanciful and was dismissed by officials at Ukraine’s International Legion.

When asked why he had gone to Ukraine to volunteer, Routh said at the time: “To me, it’s a no-brainer. I’m quite surprised that everyone isn’t there.”

Via Financial Times