Exclusive: Private Messages Reveal What the Accused Trump Gunman Did in Ukraine

Ryan Routh, the gunman suspected of trying to assassinate Donald Trump this weekend at a golf course in Florida, was well known but not widely respected among the community of foreign fighters he tried to help in Ukraine. According to three of his contacts there, he spent much of his time in Kyiv over the past three years pushing a half-baked plan to recruit soldiers for the Ukrainian army from the war-torn nations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

“I have 40 or 50 men sitting around 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 into the full-scale Russian invasion. “Done digging trenches for the Ukrainians,” he added.

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

His private messages, which have not been previously made public, date from the summer of 2022 to the fall of 2023, and include apparent lists of soldiers from the Arab world that Routh claimed to have recruited. “No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before,” an official from the Ukrainian International Legion wrote in response to Routh’s offers of help in November 2022. “Those countries are banned and for good reason.”

Later that day, Routh wrote back: “How about afghanistan???” 

One of his acquaintances in Ukraine says that Routh did have some success in recruiting fighters for a unit of the International Legion, a military force that Ukraine created at the start of the invasion to attract volunteers from around the world. But the commander of the 2nd International Legion, Colonel Ruslan Miroshnichenko, denied ever accepting any of Routh’s assistance.

“His actions and attitude very often were not meeting the official policy of Ukrainian armed forces in terms of recruitment to international legions,” Miroshnichenko said when reached by TIME on Monday.

Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after Secret Service officers spotted him lurking in the tree line around Trump’s golf course in Florida. The Republican presidential nominee was playing the fifth hole when one of the security officers fired at Routh. After his arrest, investigators found a loaded rifle with a scope that Routh had allegedly left behind as he fled the scene. During a court appearance on Monday, he was charged with federal gun crimes.

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

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

People who knew Routh in Kyiv say that 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 of them said Routh was “basically homeless” in Kyiv and sometimes stayed at the bases or barracks of Ukrainian military units that would allow him crash there.

Colonel Miroshnichenko described running into Routh on Kyiv’s Independence Square one day in the spring of 2022. He was “waving the American flag, smiling, cheering,” and he struck up a conversation with Miroshnichenko, apparently because the officer was wearing a military uniform. When Routh brought up his ideas on recruitment, the officer says he urged him to go through official military channels instead of "improvising schemes" for filling the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

“He was not affiliated with the armed forces of Ukraine in those days,” Miroshnichenko says. “This person, voluntarily, in the spring time of 2022, tried to recruit some foreigners to some military units. Perhaps he managed partially doing so. But he didn’t have any authority to do that. He did it himself. And his approaches often did not meet official Ukrainian military policy.”

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

“All of these soldiers worked with the US and coalition forces so their track record is easy to see,” he wrote. “All we need are Ukrainian visas, we can handle the rest.” 

After receiving a firm rejection from a military recruiter in Ukraine, Routh answered sarcastically: “So you have plenty of soldiers…good deal…when do we win this war??”