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.

“No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before,” an official with the Ukrainian International Legion replied to Routh in November 2022. “Those countries are banned and for good reason.”

“How about Afghanistan???” Routh messaged back a little later.

While one of his contacts said Routh had managed to recruit some fighters, Colonel Ruslan Miroshnichenko of the 2nd International Legion denied this.

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“His actions and attitude very often were not meeting the official policy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in terms of recruitment to international legions,” he told Time on Monday.

Miroshnichenko recalled meeting Routh in Kiev in the spring of 2022, describing him as “waving the American flag, smiling, cheering” and offering to deliver recruits. The colonel said he told Routh to go through the official channels and not improvise.

Whether Routh ever managed to recruit some fighters, “he didn’t have any authority to do that,” Miroshnichenko insisted. 

As of early November 2023, Routh was still trying to convince Kiev to hire US-trained Afghan troops, asking for visas so they could be brought over. When that was rejected, he texted back: “So you have plenty of soldiers…good deal…when do we win this war??”