Private messages from alleged Trump shooter in Ukraine

RYan Routh, the gunman suspected of trying to assassinate Donald Trump this weekend on a Florida golf course, was well-known but little respected among the foreign fighter community he tried to help in Ukraine. He spent much of his time in Kiev over the past three years promoting a half-baked plan to recruit soldiers for the Ukrainian military in war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, according to three of his contacts there.

“I have 40 or 50 men waiting for a logical place to fight,” he wrote in a message to one of his contacts in Ukraine in early July 2022, a few months after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. “I have finished digging trenches for the Ukrainians,” he added.

The offer of help was rejected, as were numerous apparent attempts by Routh to address the manpower shortage in Ukraine’s armed forces, according to correspondence with Routh that two of his contacts in Ukraine shared with TIME. In media interviews well before his arrest Sunday, Routh spoke openly about his recruiting efforts in Ukraine, including to the New York Times. Times and Semafor.

His private messages, which have not been made public until now, date from the summer of 2022 to the fall of 2023 and include apparent lists of soldiers from the Arab world that Routh claims to have recruited. “No recruiting in Syria or Iraq! I told you that before,” a Ukrainian International Legion official wrote in response to Routh’s offers of help in November 2022. “These countries are off limits and for good reason.”

Later in the day, Routh responded: “What about Afghanistan???”

One of his acquaintances in Ukraine claims that Routh managed to recruit fighters for a unit of the International Legion, a military force created by Ukraine at the start of the invasion to attract volunteers from around the world. But the commander of the 2nd International Legion, Col. Ruslan Miroshnichenko, has denied ever accepting help from Routh.

“His actions and attitude very often did not correspond to the official policy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in terms of recruiting into the international legions,” Miroshnichenko said when contacted by TIME on Monday.

Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday after Secret Service agents spotted him lurking in the tree line surrounding Trump’s golf course in Florida. The Republican presidential nominee was teeing off on the fifth hole when one of the security guards shot Routh. After his arrest, investigators found a loaded rifle with a scope that Routh allegedly left behind as he fled the scene. At a court appearance Monday, he was charged with federal firearms crimes.

His views on the war in Ukraine have been well documented in his social media posts and in a self-published book called “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” in which he expounds on geopolitics and denounces Trump as “a brainless fool,” according to the Associated Press. At one point in the book, he reportedly wrote of Iran: “You are free to assassinate Trump.”

The public defender assigned to Routh’s case did not respond to TIME’s request for comment Monday.

People who knew Routh in kyiv say he was a frequent and eccentric presence in the center of the Ukrainian capital and among the city’s community of foreign military volunteers. One said Routh was “virtually homeless” in Kiev and sometimes stayed at the bases or barracks of Ukrainian military units that allowed him to settle there.

Col. Miroshnichenko described running into Routh on Independence Square in Kyiv one day in the spring of 2022. He was “waving the American flag, smiling, clapping,” and struck up a conversation with Miroshnichenko, apparently because the officer was wearing a military uniform. When Routh raised his ideas about recruiting, the officer said he urged him to go through official military channels instead of “making improvised plans” to fill the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

“At that time, he was not affiliated with the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Miroshnichenko says. “This man voluntarily, in the spring of 2022, tried to recruit foreigners into some military units. He may have succeeded in part. But he had no authority to do so. He did it himself. And his actions often did not correspond to official Ukrainian military policy.”

A year and a half later, Routh is still trying to reach out to senior Ukrainian officials and gain their support for his recruiting strategy. By then, the tone of his exchanges with some recruiters and officers of the International Legion had become increasingly tense, even hostile. In a message from early November 2023, Routh claimed that the U.S. Secret Service, the same agency that arrested him on Sunday, could help him vet the military records of soldiers he wanted to recruit in Afghanistan and other countries.

“All of these soldiers have worked with U.S. and coalition forces, so their backgrounds are easy to see,” he wrote. “All we need are Ukrainian visas, we can take care of the rest.”

After receiving a flat refusal from a military recruiter in Ukraine, Routh sarcastically responded: “So you have a lot of soldiers… good deal… when are we going to win this war?”