Ryan Routh, the man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on Sunday, was profiled by The New York Times in 2023 for his role as a recruiter in Ukraine.
In a March 2023 piece titled, “Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker” Times authors Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff profiled a number of oddballs who were operating in support of Ukraine’s war effort, either in Ukraine or abroad.
According to the byline of the piece, “People who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front, with ready access to American weapons.”
One of those people was Ryan Routh.
The piece describes how Routh was actively recruiting for the so-called “Foreign Legion,” a volunteer force made up of foreigners.
When the Times spoke to Routh, he was in Washington, but he had spent “several months in Ukraine last year [i.e. 2022].”
He told the Times that he was seeking foreign recruits among Afghans who had fled the Taliban. Routh said he intended to help recruits move, “in some cases illegally,” from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine.
“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” Routh said.
Other figures profiled included Malcolm Nance, “a former Navy cryptologist and MSNBC commentator.”
“Mr. Nance, whose television appearances have made him one of the most visible Americans supporting Ukraine, was an experienced military operator,” the piece notes, with a background in intelligence.
Details about the would-be assassin, including his links to the Ukrainian war effort, continue to emerge. Although his social-media accounts have already been scrubbed, Twitter users have been posting screengrabs from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that show how Routh was involved with recruiting on behalf of Kyiv, in Europe and in the US. He posted angry anti-Trump and pro-Ukraine messages.
Routh appeared in a propaganda video for the notorious neo-Nazi Azov battalion in 2022.
Records suggest he made 19 donations to Democratic candidates since 2019.
He also appears to have been well known to law enforcement, with a string of offences to his name, including “possession of a weapon of mass destruction” in 2002.
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