Ryan Wesley Routh, who allegedly sought to assassinate former President Trump over the weekend, was largely dismissed as a troubled eccentric in his attempts to rally support for Ukraine over the past two years.
But following his high-profile arrest, there are fears that his activity around Ukraine’s war could be used by Russia to further undermine support for Kyiv, both in the U.S. and globally.
Ukrainian military units were quick to reject any association with Routh as his advocacy for Ukraine surfaced in recent days. And Routh, by his own admission, never made headway with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense for his scheme to recruit U.S.-trained Afghan soldiers in to the fight against Russia.
“He was friendly, but just off,” Ryan O’Leary, a volunteer in Ukraine’s International Legion, told The Hill this week.
O’Leary, an Army veteran who also volunteered to fight with the Kurdish Peshmerga against ISIS, is among a relatively small group of foreign volunteers fighting for Ukraine’s military. But there is a larger collection of outsiders — drawn to conflicts viewed as battles between good and evil — who rushed to offer support for Kyiv in the weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion in late February 2022.
Routh, 58, was among them.
“Personally, I found him harmless but not a person who should be in a war zone, as he was all over the place mentally and I don’t think he understood the gravity of being in war zones and such,” O’Leary said.
Routh’s allegiances in the U.S. appear more complicated. He said he voted for Trump in 2016 but apparently became disillusioned with the former president. More recently he expressed support for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy during their GOP presidential bids.
Routh allegedly laid in wait for Trump with a loaded SKS semiautomatic rifle outside the former president’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla. Phone records indicate he may have waited in the bushes there for nearly 12 hours, though he did not fire any shots, and Secret Service spotted him before he had a line of sight on Trump, according to officials and court documents.
Russian officials were quick to link Routh’s support for Ukraine as demonstrating a danger of U.S. support for Kyiv, part of the Kremlin’s propaganda effort to justify its unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“I wonder what would happen if it turned out that the failed new Trump shooter Routh, who recruited mercenaries for the Ukrainian army, was himself hired by the Neo-Nazi regime in [Kyiv] for this assassination attempt?” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council and one of the more outspoken Kremlin officials, wrote on the social platform X.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticized Ukraine supporters as people “devoid of the least bit of conscience.”
“By the way, those of them who survive will then return to the United States. And they will pick up where Routh left off — shooting at their own people,” she said, according to TASS, a Russian state-run news agency .
And Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said “playing with fire has its consequences,” when asked for reaction on Routh’s links to Ukraine, in reference to U.S. support for Kyiv.
Routh tried to lobby congressional offices last year to support his plans to aid Ukraine by deploying foreign soldiers from Afghanistan or Syria to help Kyiv’s war effort — but those contacted by The Hill denied interacting with Routh, or said they respectfully declined his advances.
He claimed to Semafor at the time that he visited 200 House offices in a single day and had visited all 100 Senate offices days prior. All offices are open to the public. He planned to visit another 200 House offices, he told the outlet.
He also told Semafor that four or five offices seemed receptive to his efforts, including those of Reps. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass), but aides for both lawmakers were dismissive of his outreach.
“He was pushing this idea of getting Afghan soldiers to go fight in Ukraine,” an aide to Moulton’s office said. “I think the overall impression was that he was eccentric, and his ideas you don’t want to be connected to — someone who you let say their piece and then try to get them on their way relatively quickly.”
And a spokesperson for Moore’s office said Routh was referred to the State Department. “Congressman Moore never met with Routh, and our office did not respond to any more of his inquiries,” they said.
Likewise, the U.S. Helsinki Commission said it has no record of any staff or commissioners meeting with Routh, in response to Routh’s claims to The New York Times in 2023 that he had traveled to Washington to meet with the committee for “two hours” over ways to support Ukraine.
O’Leary, the volunteer for Ukraine’s military, said he agreed that Routh’s ties to Ukraine could be used to deepen partisan divides over support for Kyiv.
“Outside of Ukraine, yes, I think his actions have and will be negative for Ukraine,” he told The Hill.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said any attempt to link Routh’s support for Ukraine to political violence “are excuses.”
“It has nothing to do with the assassination attempt on the former president — the support for Ukraine, that’s in our national security interest,” he said.
“There will be people who use any excuse not to support it [Ukraine]. They are excuses. The facts are the facts. Understand history and understand what Mr. Putin is trying to do. There’s no choice here but to help Ukraine.”
Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, rejected concerns that Routh’s support for Ukraine would undermine American support for Kyiv.
“I think you’re reaching at this point,” he responded to The Hill.
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