Ryan Wesley Routh, whom AFP interviewed in Kyiv in 2022 while travelling to support the war effort, was named by US media as the alleged would-be assassin of Donald Trump.
US media reported that Routh, 58, was arrested when US Secret Service officials “opened fire on a gunman” holding an AK-47 style weapon at the boundary of Trump’s Florida golf property, where the former president was playing golf on Sunday.
The guy bolted from the foliage he was hiding in and fled in a black automobile before being apprehended by officials.
CNN and CBS reported Routh was a self-employed affordable house builder in Hawaii with a decades-long jail record.
He frequently wrote on politics and current events, occasionally criticising Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Routh offered support for Ukraine’s battle against the invasion undertaken by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“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,” Routh said in an X post in March 2022, according to the New York Times, which also interviewed him.
Routh was interviewed by AFP in Kyiv in late April 2022 while participating in a demonstration in support of Ukrainians imprisoned in the port city of Mariupol.
“Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended, so we need everybody from around the world to stop what they are doing and come here now,” he told AFP at the time.
The United States has been a loyal supporter of Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.
President Joe Biden will be succeeded next January by either his Vice President, Kamala Harris, who has signalled that she will continue his policy of supporting Ukraine, or by Trump, who refused to declare whether he wanted Kyiv to win the war at a debate earlier this week.
