The suspect in Sunday’s alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Florida is reportedly a vocal supporter of Ukraine and has even criticized the former US president in a self-published book about the war in Ukraine, according to CNN.
• Also read: Alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump: Here’s what we know
• Also read: Suspected assassination attempt: Suspect criticized Trump on social media
Ryan Wesley Routh reportedly attended a rally in support of Ukrainian troops on May 1er May 2022 in Independence Square in Kyiv, after the full-scale invasion by Russia.
The 58-year-old even reportedly expressed his support for Ukraine several times on the social network X in 2022, saying he was ready to “die” in the fight and that the Kremlin should be “burned to ashes,” CNN reported.
“I am ready to fly to Krakow and go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer, fight and die,” he wrote in an X-rated post in March 2022. “May I be the example that we must win.”
Ryan Wesley Routh even called Vladimir Putin a “terrorist” and said that “he had to be eliminated,” according to a video released by AFP in April 2022.
A Ukrainian officer confirmed to CNN that he had “never been part” of the military unit in which the foreign volunteers for Ukraine are fighting, but that he had “contacted them several times.”
He calls Trump an “imbecile”
In his self-published book on the war in Ukraine and geopolitics, the suspect in the alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump reportedly called him an “idiot,” a “buffoon,” and an “imbecile.”
For Ryan Wesley Routh, the former US president’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 was “a huge mistake” that would have brought Tehran closer to Moscow, to which he would have supplied drones that would have caused havoc in Ukraine.
The 50-year-old also reportedly referred to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, calling the event a “catastrophe perpetrated by Donald Trump and his anti-democratic gang.”
Routh also reportedly admitted to voting for the former US president in the last election, but said he “misjudged him and made a terrible mistake.”
