Alleged Trump gunman Ryan Wesley Routh was prepared to fight and die for Ukraine

Washington: The suspected gunman in an alleged attempted assassination of Donald Trump identified himself as someone who was prepared to fight and die in Ukraine.

The assailant, who appeared to target Trump at the former president’s golf course in Florida, has been identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old father from Hawaii.

Suspected gunman Ryan Wesley Routh.Credit: Facebook

The suspect dropped the weapon and fled in an SUV and was later taken into custody in a neighbouring county, authorities said. A motive is unclear. Authorities said the gunman had two backpacks hanging on a fence and a GoPro camera.

In the two years before the attempted shooting, Routh, a former roofing contractor from Greensboro North Carolina, frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion.

In April 2022, two months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Routh, on social media platform X, posted to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “I am here in kyiv and want to use Independence Park to create a tent city of all the foreigners here in support to get thousands more foreign civilians to come and support Ukraine... We can raise great support and equipment.”

Weeks after Russia’s invasion, Routh posted: “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE”.

In another post from May 2022 he wrote: “Killing anywhere is extremely tragic.”

US media outlet Semafor reported that last year Routh had acted as the leader of a group called the International Volunteer Centre, which sought to bring foreign troops to Ukraine to assist Kyiv.

Semafor cited its own March 7, 2023 interview with Routh in which the American – who is now a suspect in the Florida assassination attempt – expressed frustration with Ukraine over its willingness to accept foreign fighters.

“Ukraine is very often hard to work with,” Routh is quoted as saying. “Many foreign soldiers leave after a week in Ukraine or must move from unit to unit to find a place they are respected and appreciated.”

Routh has frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine.Credit: LinkedIn

Routh had suggested Ukraine make use of Afghan commandos, but was “yelled at” by his Ukrainian contacts, Semafor reported.

Among other details to emerge, Routh had been involved in efforts to support Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

In an interview with the New York Times, also in 2023, Routh said he would seek Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban and planned to move them, in some instances, illegally from Pakistan and Iran and into Ukraine.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan since it’s such a corrupt country,” he told the Times. It was not clear if Routh ever followed through.

Ryan Routh’s home in Kaaawa, Hawaii.Credit: AP

In June 2020, he made a post on X directed at then-president Trump to say he would win re-election if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct.

Law enforcement identified Routh as the suspect to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Routh’s son, Oran Routh, told US broadcaster CNN he didn’t have details about what had occurred, but he hoped “things have just been blown out of proportion”.

“Ryan is my father and I don’t have any comment beyond a character profile of him as a loving and caring father, an honest hard-working man,” Oran Routh told CNN.

“I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent.

“He’s a good father and a great man, and I hope you can portray him in an honest light.”

In 2022, Routh was convicted of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to North Carolina Department of Adult Correction online records.

The records do not provide details about the case, but a News & Record story from 2002 says a man with the same name was arrested after a three-hour stand-off with police. The story says he was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a gun and barricaded himself inside a roofing business.

Routh was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a weapon of mass destruction, “referring to a fully automatic machine gun”, according to the News & Record newspaper.

The New York Times reports that at some stage in the last several years, Routh moved to Hawaii, where a man with his name ran a small business.

In a May 2020 post, he invited Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to Hawaii for a vacation and offered to act as “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes between the two nations.

with agencies, Chris Zappone

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.