Text messages confirm Ryan Routh tried to recruit foreign fighters for the Ukrainian cause
The man who allegedly planned to kill US presidential candidate Donald Trump spent “most of” the past three years in Ukraine, trying to recruit foreign fighters for Kiev, Time magazine has reported, citing his private messages.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after the US Secret Service spotted him at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Police found an illegal rifle with a scope at his improvised ambush spot.
Dozens of social media posts, a self-published pamphlet, and multiple interviews with Western media outlets while he was in Kiev testified to Routh’s activism on behalf of Ukraine. Time has since obtained his private messages from two of his contacts in Kiev, who were not identified.
“I have 40 or 50 men sitting around waiting for a logical place to fight,” Routh reportedly texted in early July 2022. “Done digging trenches for the Ukrainians,” he added.
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The outlet described Routh as “well known but not widely respected among the community of foreign fighters he tried to help in Ukraine.” Three of his contacts who spoke to Time said he spent “much of his time” over the past three years pushing a “half-baked plan” to recruit fighters from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
One described him as “basically homeless,” sleeping at the barracks or bases of Ukrainian military units. The direct messages obtained by Time date from the summer of 2023 to the autumn of 2023, and include what appears to be a list of Arab fighters he claimed to have recruited.