By Max Hunder
KYIV (Reuters) – The suspect in an apparent assassination attempt on U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was seen as a liability by some soldiers and volunteers in Ukraine, where he offered to recruit Afghans into the Ukrainian military, a former soldier told Reuters on Tuesday.
Ryan Routh, 58, who was arrested about 40 minutes after the incident on Sunday at one of the former president’s Florida golf courses, publicly backed Ukraine and spent time in Kyiv after Russia launched its invasion in 2022.
“He was delusional … he had this idea that he was the only one who knew how to help Ukraine,” Evelyn Aschenbrenner, a former soldier in Ukraine’s International Legion, told Reuters via Zoom from Lviv.
Reuters has seen documents confirming Aschenbrenner’s Ukrainian military service. The U.S. citizen said they served in an administrative role in the Legion for two years from March 2022.
Routh had told media outlets in 2023 that he had worked to bring foreign fighters to the Legion, set up in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 invasion for foreign nationals who wanted to fight for Ukraine.
Ukraine has said that Routh never fought for Ukraine in the International Legion or any other military unit.
“We can see from the news reports that the suspect previously publicly supported Ukraine but, look, there are hundreds of millions of people in the United States who support Ukraine and clearly they are a diverse group of individuals,” Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
“We urge everyone to refrain from artificially linking the suspect’s actions to Ukraine.”
In screenshots of messages shared with Reuters by Aschenbrenner, Routh was asked to stop acting as a recruiter on behalf of Ukraine as he was operating outside established frameworks. He responded angrily.
In one exchange on Signal, Routh demanded that Aschenbrenner help him get a female Finn who was keen to enlist across the border after she was denied re-entry to Ukraine. When Aschenbrenner said they could not help him, Routh wrote:
“It’s cool, I’ll tell the world Ukraine does not want help. … Why the fuck did I come,” he wrote.
Aschenbrenner said that all those they knew who came into contact with Routh would eventually become irritated at his behaviour and come to believe he was potentially damaging Ukraine’s cause.
“He sent me a list of … like five or six thousand Afghan citizens and their names,” Aschenbrenner said. It was not clear how Routh had compiled the list.
When Aschenbrenner told Routh over WhatsApp messages that he should stop trying to recruit Afghans, he began boasting of his lifestyle in Hawaii and indicated he did not care about Ukraine.
“Point is I am happy and not worried about Ukraine … Congress is cutting all funding now it seems … good luck,” one message said.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Additional reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
