Many questions remain about the man accused of planning to assassinate former President Donald Trump at his Florida golf club. Ryan Routh had a criminal record and ping-ponging political allegiances, and in a detail that’s drawing some scrutiny, he also traveled to Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
Routh spoke with major media organizations then about wildly ambitious plans to help the war effort. Americans devoted to helping Ukraine now worry Routh’s newfound notoriety will damage their cause.
Adrian Bonenberger, an Afghanistan vet who co-founded American Veterans for Ukraine, says he was horrified to hear of a second attempted assassination of Trump, but was also dismayed when he heard about Routh’s background.
“When I heard that he had a connection to Ukraine, of course my first thought was, oh no, that's horrible. People are gonna get the wrong impression,” Bonenberger said.
Routh had no military experience, but, already in his late 50s, he traveled to Ukraine and began pushing the idea of recruiting U.S.-trained former soldiers from Afghanistan to fight in Ukraine.
“I’m talking to a hundred soldiers every day,” he claimed in a 2023 interview with the news site Semafor. Routh admitted in that interview that Ukrainian officials opposed the idea and, “pretty much yelled at me every time that I suggested that we bring in Afghans.”
The New York Times also interviewed him about his scheme back then, and Routh discussed possibly bribing officials and obtaining forged passports to get the Afghans to Ukraine. In an article this week, Times reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff said he had dismissed Routh as “in way over his head.”
Now that he’s known worldwide for allegedly plotting to assassinate Trump though, Americans who support Ukraine worry the damage to their cause could be serious.
Idealists, adventurers and mad men
Americans turning up in Ukraine run the gamut, says Bonenberger, who has visited Ukraine several times since the war started to train Ukrainian soldiers with other U.S. combat veterans.
“You have idealists, adventurers, drifters, desperados, criminals and mad men. Parsing those people out, seeing who's who, it's difficult in the moment … to sort out people who are essentially reasonable people who are doing something unusual and extraordinary from people who are not,” he said. “Some people who are running from the law, some people who are cynical opportunists just trying to make a name for themselves or make money … or people who are just mentally unbalanced.”
Supporters of Ukraine worry that the country’s struggle against Russia has become a partisan election-year issue and that Routh’s alleged plot might tar their whole movement as anti-Trump. This comes after the former president was asked during this month’s debate whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. Trump instead answered, “I want the war to stop.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the second time in recent months, posted his sympathy and best wishes to Trump. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told NPR during a press briefing on Tuesday in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, “Ukraine has strongly condemned this criminal act and all forms of political violence. We are glad that this suspect was apprehended so quickly.”
Tykhyi said Routh has no connection to the Ukrainian government and never served in the International Legion, the main force of foreign military volunteers, or in any units in Ukraine’s armed forces.
“There are hundreds of millions of people in the United States who support Ukraine and clearly they are diverse individuals. We urge everyone to refrain, refrain from artificially linking this suspect’s actions to Ukraine,” he said.
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