KYIV -- In the early months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ryan Wesley Routh was a frequent and visible presence in Kyiv, reaching out to pedestrians on the city's famed Khreschatyk Street, addressing people in English, exchanging phone numbers, and asking for help in supporting Ukraine's armed forces.
He was seen by volunteers coming to Kyiv as a kind of mascot for Ukraine's military, said Christian Lutz, a German man who runs an aid organization called Phoenix and met Routh several times in 2022.
"‘The recruiter guy with an American flag around his neck'-- It's how everybody referred to him," Lutz told RFE/RL. "He seemed to be a lone wolf. He didn't have colleagues or friends with him."
Fast forward two years: Routh, 58, is now a suspect in an alleged assassination attempt against former U.S. President Donald Trump. Routh was detained by police in Florida on September 15 after Secret Service agents spotted him allegedly pointing a rifle at Trump as the Republican presidential candidate golfed at a West Palm Beach club.
Routh was arrested after fleeing the scene, and agents recovered an "AK-47-style" rifle with a scope, along with two backpacks and a GoPro camera from the scene, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters.
While no evidence has yet to appear linking Routh's efforts in Ukraine to the incident in Florida, his arrest has stunned people who crossed paths with him in Ukraine and encountered his sometimes shambolic but apparently sincere efforts to help Ukraine in its defense against Russia's invasion.
"What the f*** is going on? This cannot be true," Lutz said when he heard the news about Routh's arrest.
Some of Ukraine's best-known volunteer fighting units were quick to distance themselves from Routh, releasing statements denying any connection to him.
"Routh has never served in the International Legion of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. He has no relation to the unit," the International Legion, an officially sanctioned unit made up of foreign volunteers, said in a Telegram post. "Rumors circulating in certain media are not true."
In April 2022, Routh appeared at a rally in Kyiv in support of the Azov Battalion -- a controversial military unit revered by many in Ukraine for its fighting prowess.
In the preceding months, after weeks of holding out in the port city of Mariupol against a withering Russian siege, battalion members had finally surrendered, and many had been taken prisoner by Russia. Family members waged a public relations campaign, and staged rallies, to try and press for their relatives' release.
According to an Associated Press video of the event, Routh was seen wearing a blue vest with a U.S. flag on its back and holding a placard that read: "We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for another 50+ years. End Russia for our kids."
Routh also appeared in a video published in May 2022 by a Twitter account run by the relatives of Azov members.
"We would like to officially state that Ryan Wesley Routh has no connection to Azov and has never had any connection to Azov," the group said in a post to X on September 16. "The peaceful demonstration he attended was open and anyone could join it. He was caught on the video filmed by the protesters by accident."
Speaking by phone from Germany, Lutz told RFE/RL he met Routh on his first trip to Kyiv in June 2022.
"He seemed very communicative, extroverted, and hyper-focused on his task of getting foreigners into the Ukrainian Army," Lutz said.
"Once I was driving him around Kyiv when he had an idea of looking for a factory to build drones, a drone-manufacturing plant," he said. "We were traveling with a soldier. Some low-rank soldier. I don't remember the name. The soldier was helping him casually."
Lutz said he later became wary of Routh's efforts, and he ultimately blocked Routh on social media because, he said, Routh was bombarding him with messages.
Routh's persistence, and his public presence, brought him attention from some journalists, including Newsweek, which published a brief interview with him in the magazine's Romanian edition.
"This conflict is definitely black and white," he was quoted as saying. "This is about good versus evil."
Prior to his travels to Ukraine, and his efforts to help its military, Routh led what appeared to be an itinerant life, working for a time as a roofing contractor in Greensboro, North Carolina. He did not serve in the U.S. military.
According to the Greensboro News & Record newspaper, a man the paper identified as Routh and who had the same age was arrested by police in 2002 after barricading himself inside a building with an automatic weapon.
He later moved to Hawaii, according to U.S. news reports.
Routh's social media accounts -- on X and on Facebook – have been closed down as of September 16. But archived posts showed a mix of interests and rants about U.S. politics, as well as the Ukraine war.
In a series of posts on X in 2023, Routh claimed he was recruiting Afghan soldiers who were willing to serve in Taiwan or Haiti.
On the job-networking site LinkedIn, a profile listed under Routh's name matched many of his biographical details and said he was self-employed at a Hawaii company called Camp Box Honolulu.
A March 2023 post on the same LinkedIn profile showed two undated photos of what appeared to be Routh in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, and at Kyiv's famed Maidan, or Independence Square. The photos were captioned: "In DC and Kyiv to provide soldiers for the war effort."
Routh also appeared to have self-published a book on Amazon called "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," a finding first reported by the Associated Press.
In an introduction published on the Amazon website, where the book remains on sale, Routh gave a lengthy, vehement, and sometimes rambling defense of why he thought defending Ukraine was important:
"I presume that I must be clear, that while on the current path Ukraine will not win, it is imperative for the world that they do win, and that is why this book is so important, for us all to recognize that losing is not an option and what we must do to win," the excerpt said.
