The American who allegedly tried to assassinate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had visited kyiv and offered his services to Ukraine but was turned down, the Ukrainian military said Monday.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after the US Secret Service discovered him at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. His social media posts and a self-published book claimed he was involved with the Ukrainian military.
On Monday, the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command confirmed to CNN that Routh had been in contact with them, but described his ideas as “delirious” and denied having accepted their services at any time.
“He was offering us a large number of recruits from different countries, but it was obvious to us that his offers were not realistic,” Aleksandr Shaguri, a military spokesman, told CNN. “We didn’t even respond to him, there was nothing to respond to. He was never part of the Legion and he didn’t collaborate with us in any way.”
Routh defended multiple “delusional ideas”, Shaguri told the outlet.
In the summer of 2022, Routh visited Ukraine and gave multiple interviews to Western media outlets, presenting himself as a liaison with the government in kyiv and seeking to recruit pro-American fighters from Afghanistan to the Ukrainian cause. In one such interview, Routh told Romanian journalist Remus Cernea of Newsweek that he was recruiting people for the Ukrainian Legion International.
“I saw him as a genuine, innocent and idealistic person, without any murderous instincts.” Cernea told CNN after Routh was identified as the Florida gunman.
The Romanian reporter recalled that Routh saw the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as “black and white…good versus evil” and who in another interview described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “terrorist” WHO “We have to put an end to this.”
In several posts on X that year, Routh wrote that he was willing to die for Ukraine and that “We need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.” However, his account has since been deleted.
In 2023, Routh self-published a 291-page book titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” which at one point advocates killing Trump over his decision to exit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“You are free to assassinate Trump and me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the agreement,” he wrote, referring to the fact that the man he called “A brainless and “retarded child” was elected president of the United States in 2016. “But I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and I apologize to Iran.”
“No one here in the US seems to have the courage to put natural selection or even unnatural selection into practice,” he added.
Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Trump said the gunman “He believed the rhetoric of (President Joe) Biden and (Vice President Kamala) Harris, and he acted on it,” pointing to his statements that the former president and Republican presidential candidate is a “threat to democracy” This must stop.
