In Ukraine, Trump’s Would-Be ‘Assassin’ Talked Much and Did Little
There is no evidence that the man accused of attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Sunday fought in Ukraine, although he did travel there and tried to connect with a variety of officials and aid workers, sources tell Rolling Stone.
During his time in Ukraine, the suspect routinely presented himself as a military recruiter and claimed affiliation with an official unit for foreign soldiers, according to multiple interviews he gave to journalists working in the country.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, has been named by law enforcement as the suspect arrested in what FBI officials say “appears to be an assassination attempt” at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A Secret Service agent traveling ahead of Trump’s golf entourage noticed a rifle barrel sticking out of the bushes, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said in a news conference. The agent opened fire at the suspect, who escaped in a black Nissan which was subsequently intercepted by law enforcement, after an eyewitness provided photos of the vehicle. The eyewitness later identified the captured driver as the suspected gunman, Bradshaw said.
Law enforcement provided photos of a scoped SKS — a semiautomatic rifle similar to a Kalashnikov — left at the scene, along with two backpacks and a GoPro. Routh has been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Multiple news agencies report that Routh has a lengthy criminal history, including an arrest for possession of a fully automatic weapon in 2002 and more than 100 charges in North Carolina.
Routh has also previously spoken to a number of news organizations — including The New York Times and Semafor — about his supposed efforts to aid Ukraine. Some outlets reported that he claimed to have “fought” in Ukraine, specifically naming him the head of the International Volunteer Center (IVC), a non-profit based in Lviv that provides assistance to foreign volunteers.
“Routh has no affiliation with IVC. He is not in our organization,” Ian Netupsky, who runs the aid group, tells Rolling Stone. “I am the founder. I spearhead the IVC. There’s two other founders. This person is not one of them.”
Rolling Stone reviewed multiple images and documents dating from before the incident on Sunday that outlined IVC’s leadership structure and key contacts, provided by third parties who had interacted with the group. Routh’s name did not appear in any of these.
Netupsky acknowledges it is possible Routh was among the hundreds of volunteers that had contacted IVC at some point, but believes Routh simply lied to journalists about working for the group or was referring to an unregistered organization with the same name.
“There are three ways in which a person could be connected to us: Assistance with getting a D-10 visa which requires an invitation letter from an existing aid organization; getting our help facilitating a Temporary Residency Permit; or for finding opportunities with NGOs and other non-profits based on a volunteer’s skills and an organization’s requirements,” Netupsky says, adding that his group did none of these things for Routh.
Routh regularly wrote Ukraine-related posts on Twitter, tagging everyone from pop singer Elton John to former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard with hare-brained schemes — such as teaming up with Sean Penn to buy a MiG-29 from Poland to carry out a strike on Russian President Vladimir Putin, or advising Belarussian dissidents to buy sniper rifles on Amazon to overthrow the government. Routh’s account has since been suspended, but some sites were able to grab screenshots of many of his posts.
At one point, he called on Dave Matthews Band to perform a song for Ukraine, writing to the band in December last year: “we need an emotional tribute song for Ukraine as support stalls. I have lyrics and music to We Are One to rally global support. Please help me… I live near [singer-songwriter] Jack Johnson and am sure he would help.”
Routh did travel from Hawaii to Ukraine in 2022, according to people who met him there, but he acknowledged on Twitter before traveling that he had no military experience and was unsure what he would do when he arrived.
In his time in Ukraine, Routh was notable for his outlandish behavior and repeated efforts to get the attention of officialdom. At some point he began representing himself as an official military recruiter, setting up a public booth in central Kyiv.
“He was just kind of hanging around Maidan [Square] and engaging with anyone who would listen or talk with him,” says Guilluame Ptak, a freelance journalist based in Kyiv who recorded an interview with Routh in June 2022. “You could see that the guy was overly emotional and teary eyed. I found him to be a bit of an oddball.”
Volunteers known to Rolling Stone associated with an official unit for foreign fighters, the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, began publicly raising red flags about Routh over the summer: “Warning about Ryan Routh: He is not, and never has been, associated with the International Legion or the Ukrainian Armed Forces at all… He is misrepresenting himself and lying to many people.”
The Ukrainian military denied any relationship with Routh.
“American citizen Ryan Routh has never served in the International Legion of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, [and] has no relation to the unit,” the International Legion’s Defense Intelligence unit wrote in an official statement. “Rumors disseminated in certain media are not true.”
As of Monday, Rolling Stone was unable to identify any humanitarian organization that could confirm Routh had worked for them, nor any military unit that claimed affiliation with him.
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, thousands of foreigners have flocked to Ukraine to take part in the war, either as military volunteers, humanitarian aid workers, or in some other capacity. Many have provided essential skills, and dozens have been killed carrying out aid work or fighting alongside Ukrainian forces.
There have also been a number of foreigners who have misrepresented their military service or volunteer work in Ukraine, often for personal benefit. There is no hard data on the number of foreigners who lie about what they are doing in Ukraine as part of grifts, scams, or due to mental health issues, but based on the observations of this reporter over two and a half years, it is significant. “Crazy volunteer” has become a kind of shorthand for “person to avoid” among professional aid workers, officials, and journalists in-country.
Conflicts often become a magnet for adrenaline junkies, extreme tourists, con men, and lost souls. Early in the war, several media outlets ran features about how the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv had become like Casablanca — the 1942 movie version, rather than the gritty commercial port in Morocco — but one experienced photographer apprised the milieu of foreigners arriving without a discernible purpose contemptuously: “It’s become like that fucking bar in Star Wars.”
The influx of Americans, be they do-gooders, ne’er-do-wells, or something in between, was noticeable enough that as early as April 2022, after a difficult interaction with a group of English-speaking foreigners, a waiter at a café frequented by this reporter threw up his hands in despair and asked a question that has been heard in many lands, at many times: “Why are there so many of you Americans here?”
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