Analysis: Ryan Routh's support for Ukraine is a propaganda victory for Moscow at a very difficult time for Kyiv

London
CNN
—

It is precisely the kind of attention Ukraine did not need. Since it began clashing with Russia over its future in 2003, Ukraine has carefully avoided the kind of political violence of which Ryan Wesley Routh is accused.

But now, at arguably the most crucial point in the conflict, Routh's vocal support for Kyiv has somehow been picked up by Russian echo chambers after he was arrested on Sunday in connection with an alleged assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump.

It was quite easy to meet someone like Routh in the early months of Russia's all-out war in Ukraine in 2022. Border crossings and train stations were often populated by whispering, unshaven expatriates of dubious military backgrounds, seeking to create the idea that they had played a central role in Ukraine's very real and painful struggle. As the conflict has progressed, the fantasists have faded, and the resumes of dozens of Western volunteers have been reviewed or lost relevance as their supposed combat experience has been put to the test. The most brutal battle Europe has seen since the 1940s, the Ukrainian front line has never been such a place for amateur sensation-seekers.

Routh, however, tried his best to identify with the fight against Russia. In dozens of X-posts this year, he expressed his support for Ukraine and declared that he was willing to die in that fight. “We must burn the Kremlin down.”

He protested in Kyiv after the Russian invasion and even tried to enlist, but was turned away because he was 56 years old and had no military experience. He tried to recruit foreigners to fight, but he seems to have failed. The New York Times even interviewed him about a plan to obtain fake passports so that Afghan veterans from Pakistan or Iran could come to Ukraine and help resist the Russian attack. His offers to recruit large numbers of people from around the world to fight for Ukraine “were not realistic,” said Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer in the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command. He told CNN: “The best way to [Routh’s] Messages are – delusions.” Routh never worked with them – a common refrain heard throughout the Ukrainian military on Monday.

Kiev now has enough to do other than explain how little it had to do with the author of “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: Democracy’s Fatal Error, the Abandonment of the World and Global Citizens: Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea, and the End of Humanity.” This – Routh’s title for his self-published book – does not require its author to'The ideas are taken too seriously.

But Moscow's productive echo chambers have already begun to construct a narrative in which US support for Ukraine is somehow extremist. According to Reuters, when asked what he thought about the assassination attempt, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It is not we who should think about it, but the US secret services. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences.”

RT.com, an English-language news portal run by the Kremlin, also highlighted Routh's interest in Ukraine, writing: “Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that if the suspect's identity is confirmed, it will be clear that he is 'obsessed with the Ukraine war, which is funded by the United States.'”

Don't expect any new or intelligent arguments about the war in Ukraine in the coming weeks. Instead, new voices will slowly emerge, including some of the usual ones, pointing out that the war in Ukraine cannot be won, that Putin must be given a chance to negotiate a deal (even if it is only one that allows him to keep the part of Ukraine he stole), and that there is an unhealthy infection of extremists in the ranks of those who believe they must, as Routh once said, “fight and die” for Ukraine.

None of this helps Ukrainians who actually have to fight and die to protect their homes and families. It particularly hampers Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, days before he is due to present a plan for victory to the Biden administration. Voices advocating for Ukraine to receive U.S. permission to fire longer-range U.S. missiles at targets deeper inside Russian territory had grown louder. Last week, it seemed likely that President Joe Biden would continue the course he had taken when presented with previous decisions to arm Ukraine and give his approval after public pressure from allies — albeit very, very late.

But now Zelensky's press appearances could be overshadowed by questions about Routh, as absurdly far removed from Kyiv's agenda as his apparent attack on a Florida golf course was. This will fuel the ultimate paranoia of U.S. isolationists: that actions abroad that appear to serve America's global interests risk fomenting violence at home.

Routh's political leanings and worldview have been far from unified, if not delusional. But in the smoky forum of random gibberish that is social media, for those who look for it, they contribute to a narrative about supporting Ukraine causing chaos in America. That the United States should just stay out of Putin's war.

None of this has anything to do with the cruel reality that Ukrainians face every night, when they are jolted awake by Russian missiles or when they lose loved ones in the brutal destruction on the front lines.

Washington's support for Kyiv is weighty and consequential when it comes into play clumsily, but it is frighteningly fragile when exposed to US electoral politics and the fickle grip of the Republican Party on geopolitics. The sudden installation of a wayward extremist like Routh is a loud, confusing wild card at a time when support for Ukraine desperately needs a calm and balanced voice.