A former volunteer for Ukraine’s International Legion has branded Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, as “delusional” and a “liar” over his claims that he recruited for the Ukrainian organization.
Routh, 58, is in custody after an attempt was made on the life of Trump, 78, at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where shots were fired on Sunday.
Trump survived “what appears to be an assassination attempt” the FBI said. The former president was “safe following gunshots in his vicinity” at his golf club, the Trump campaign said.
The suspected gunman claimed in a June 2022 interview with Newsweek Romania that he recruited volunteers for the International Legion Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces.
He also spoke with The New York Times in 2023, claiming to have attempted to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to the Ukrainian army.
Russia has seized on his claims to push the unfounded allegation that Routh could have been recruited by Ukraine to make an attempt on the life of the former U.S. president, who has criticized the scale of U.S. support and military aid for Kyiv amid the war, which is now in its third year.
“I wonder what would happen if it turned out that the failed new Trump shooter Routh, who recruited mercenaries for the Ukrainian army, was himself hired by the neo-nazi regime in Kiev for this assassination attempt?” asked former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.
But the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine said in a statement that Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina, had “never been part of, associated with, or linked” to it “in any capacity.”
Evelyn Aschenbrenner, a U.S. citizen from Detroit, Michigan, who worked with the International Legion beginning in March 2022—first in administration, and then as a recruiter—for a total of two years, also told Newsweek on Monday from Kyiv that they had been in contact with Routh since 2022, and that he is “delusional and a liar.”
Aschenbrenner, who left the International Legion in mid-June of this year, had warned on social media since June that Routh is “not, and never has been, associated with the International Legion or the Ukrainian Armed Forces at all.”
Routh messaged Aschenbrenner between March 2022 and March 2024, sending details of potential recruits, including a list of some 6,000 Afghani citizens. He would then become “hostile” and “manipulative” when told to refrain from doing so.
Newsweek has been sent an exchange of messages between Aschenbrenner and Routh.
“He said, ‘Oh you don’t really want to help Ukraine’. He was very emotionally, like, twisting like that, where if you refused to help or pushed back against him, he was very accusatory. He never listened to anything that I said, he didn’t register,” Aschenbrenner said.
“He sent me a PDF of, like, 6,000 Afghani citizens. They can’t legally enter Europe. He was combative. He was argumentative. He refused repeatedly to understand basic army policy,” Aschenbrenner said.
An encounter with Routh on August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s independence day, is when Aschenbrenner “first really realized [Routh] was not firing with all pistons up there.”
“There was an increased security alert [due to] strikes from Russia, and because of that, there was curfew. I think it was 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. in Kharkiv, and [he wanted] to get a foreign person over the border to join Legion. And I’m like, not today, dude,” Aschenbrenner said.
“I do think he seemed to be a little delusional, I don’t think he thought he was a real recruiter, but I thought he really he believed that he was helping Ukraine, and he was the only one who could help Ukraine doing what he did.”
Aschenbrenner was angered when Routh in February 2023 posted their personal details online, promising individuals the chance to fight in Ukraine.
“[He] started giving out my phone number, another person’s phone number, and after getting phone calls from soldiers from Uganda…I had several arguments with him on Signal to say, this is not a service that anyone wants or needs.”
“I don’t know if he’s ever been in Ukraine, but he seemed to have this…like he was the only one who could help save Ukraine — if you didn’t do exactly what he wanted when he wanted, somehow you were helping Russia win. I was like, that’s dramatic,” Aschenbrenner said.
Aschenbrenner added: “There seems to be a lot going on. There was delusions of grandeur and [he was] very disconnected from reality.”
Routh could appear in a Florida court on Monday, according to media reports.
In his interview with Newsweek Romania, he had said: “The question as far as why I’m here … to me, a lot of the other conflicts are grey, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil. This is a storybook, you know, any movie we’ve ever watched, this is definitely evil against good.”
A Semafor report published on March 10, 2023, cited Routh as the head of the International Volunteer Center (IVC) in Ukraine, a private organization that works to “empower volunteers” and other nonprofit groups that work to “enhance the distribution of humanitarian aid throughout Ukraine,” according to the IVC’s website.
Routh’s account on X, formerly Twitter, has been suspended. However, Newsweek has seen their contents before the suspension.
On X, Routh posted dozens of times in support of Ukraine. In March 2022, for example, shortly after the full-scale invasion, he wrote: “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE … Can I be the example We must win.”
Earlier posts appear to indicate a shift in his political stance. In June 2020, in a post tagging Trump’s account, he wrote: “While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving.”
“I will be glad when you gone,” he added.
More recently, his support for Ukraine continued. In April 2024, Routh tagged Elon Musk in another X post, writing: “I would like to buy a rocket from you. I wish to load it with a warhead for Putins Black sea mansion bunker to end him. Can you give me a price please.”
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