When Ryan Routh spoke to Semafor on March 7, 2023, he was frustrated with the Ukrainian government for which he’d traveled around the world to support.
The Ukrainians, he complained, were being too rigid about admitting foreign soldiers of dubious qualifications, including a group of Afghan commandos who were facing skepticism and bureaucratic roadblocks in Kyiv.
“Ukraine is very often hard to work with. 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,” he told Semafor. He’d been “yelled at” every time he suggested they tap Afghan commandos. “They’re afraid that anybody and everybody is a Russian spy,” he said with frustration.
Now a man widely reported to be Routh, 58, is in custody for what the FBI described as an apparent attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
When Semafor talked to him, Routh was one of a wave of American volunteers in Ukraine, the self-appointed director of a group he’d started called the International Volunteer Center. He was, even by the standards of that frantic moment, a bit over the top, a Ukrainian involved in the effort told us at the time. But he was also, they said, authentically involved in the efforts to bring in foreign troops, and we quoted him in a story about the Afghan fighters.
On X, he frantically tweeted at President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with his ideas — for instance, “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.” Zelenskyy did not appear to respond.
Routh appears at 2:50 in this Semafor video:
