Revealed: How Donald Trump’s alleged assassin tapped up UK-trained Afghan commandos to fight in Ukraine

This is the extraordinary story of how Ryan Wesley Routh apparently messaged Afghan special forces hiding in Iran just three days before being arrested with an AK-47 at Trump’s Florida golf club. The UK is still dragging its feet over offering safe haven to these desperate men - paid and trained by the British - now being enticed to fight in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Holly Bancroft and May Bulman report

A man charged with Donald Trump’s attempted assassination was apparently messaging British-trained Afghan commandos about recruitment to the Ukraine war just three days before he was arrested at a Florida golf course.

Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested on 15 September after allegedly aiming a powerful AK-47-style assault rifle through the bushes at Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

The 58-year-old former roofing contractor from North Carolina had become fanatical about supporting Ukraine’s right to defend itself from Russia’s invasion. He was said to have contacted the Ukraine’s International Legion with ideas that Ukrainian military personnel described as “delusional”.

In messages linked to Routh’s Whatsapp number and seen by The Independent and investigative newroom Lighthouse Reports, there are discussions with Afghan special forces about how to get to Ukraine to fight.

The extraordinary revelation highlights the desperation of these Afghan commandos who were paid for and trained by the British to fight the Taliban but were left abandoned after Kabul fell in 2021.

Many have fled Afghanistan and are now trying to survive in Iran, as the UK drags its feet about offering safe haven - despite promising to do so nine months ago.

The Independent, in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and Afghan news outlet Etilaat Roz, has been investigating attempts to recruit these former soldiers as fighters in foreign wars with the lure of high wages.

One former special forces soldier, Hafizullah, who is living in Iran, ended up communicating with Routh’s Whatsapp about potentially going to help Ukraine. Hafizullah served for eight years in a specialist unit known as Commando Force 333, which was set up and run by the British.

This photograph taken on Independence Square in Kyiv on June 23, 2022 shows US citizen Ryan Wesley Routh sticking up national flags of the countries helping Ukraine. (AFP via Getty Images)

He fled from Afghanistan to Iran with his wife and baby son in early 2022. In a sign of the breadth of recruiters trying to entice former Afghan soldiers into combat, Hafizullah says he has received offers to fight in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria since being in Iran.

Screen shots Hafizullah provided of his WhatsApp communication show Routh apparently encouraging him to send him a CV on 12 September - three days before he was arrested near Trump’s Florida golf course.

The phone number Hafizullah was communicating with matches the one on Routh’s Fight for Ukraine website. The Whatsapp profile also matches the profile Routh has been reported as using.

Routh is now being held in a detention centre in South Florida, charged with the attempted assassination of Trump.

Screenshots of Whatsapp exchanges with Ryan Routh’s number seem to show he was still trying to recruit people to the Ukraine war just days before his arrest (The Independent/Lighthouse Reports)

Hafizullah, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, said that he had been in contact with Routh on and off for two years. He said a friend of his, a former commander in the Afghan military, had passed on his number to Routh.

In an exchange on Whatsapp with Routh’s number, Hafizullah said that life in Iran is getting harder every day. Routh’s number replied on 12 September 2024 telling him to send in his CV, adding: “You’re a doctor are you not…CV is a universal item. Many samples online…Google it. It’s really not important yet.”

Hafizullah then replied: “So I’m waiting for you to call me whenever you want, I’m ready”. Routh then sent a google doc link, instructing him to “Send that form in”. The Independent has not been able to open the document link.

Aside from messaging Routh’s number privately, Hafizullah was also in a Whatsapp group with the same number, titled ‘Soldiers for Ukraine’, which was created in April 2023. Hafizullah said that the group had over 100 members.

Routh had previously told reporters in March 2023 that he was trying to pull together a group of Afghan veterans to fight in Ukraine, but his plan doesn’t look like it ever came to fruition.

Mr Routh told The New York Times in early 2023 that he was seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Routh said he planned to move them from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine and that dozens had expressed interest. “We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan since it’s such a corrupt country”, he said in an interview from Washington.

Hafizullah said that Routh had told the group about a month before his arrest that he was trying to find safe accommodation for their families in Kenya. Hafizullah explained that the former soldiers had initially asked for a safe place for their families to live in exchange for fighting for Ukraine.

The former Triple said that him and the group cut off their connection to Routh after his arrest.

While Routh’s efforts at recruitment seemed fanciful and will have ended following his detention, Hafizullah is certain that other offers to fight abroad will still be open to the move.

He has applied for help from the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), under a relocation scheme called the Arap Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) for Afghans who worked closely with British forces. But Hafizullah, who said he had sent in his application two years ago, hasn’t heard back from the UK.

Hafizullah with his former Afghan special forces colleagues (The Independent/ Lighthouse Reports)

In February, the MoD announced that it would review around 2,000 rejections from the Arap scheme within 12 weeks, following revelations that hundreds of Afghans with credible links to specialist units had been refused under the scheme.

But nine months on, the review is still ongoing, with the armed forces minister Luke Pollard admitting that “it should not have taken this long”.

Hafizullah, who said he was living in partial hiding in Iran for fear of being deported, is still hoping that he might be helped by the MoD’s review. But he warned that desperate soldiers could be signing up to fight abroad as a way of earning money to feed their families.

He said that he had heard about recruitment efforts trying to hire Afghans to fight for Russia and Syria, explaining: “If you accept to fight somewhere, they will give you a card and you’ll have proper freedom until they send you.”

Hafizullah said he was aware of 25 people who went to fight for Russia, two of whom were from the Triples units. “When those 25 people reached Russia I lost contact with them,” he said, adding that he also knows of Afghans who are deployed to Syria for six months at a time.

He concluded: “I have three options: get killed in Afghanistan, get killed fighting on the frontlines in another country or commit suicide”.

Speaking about his wait for UK help, he added: “It really hurts. All these guys who are left behind, we know each other, we got paid by the British government, but now no one is hearing our voice.”

An MoD spokesperson said: “As the Minister for the Armed Forces made clear recently to parliament, we understand the frustration that the review is taking so long.

“Key issues within the review have been resolved and we are working hard to ensure that eligible former Triples and their families can move to start a new life in the UK.”

“The ‘Triples review’ remains high priority for the government and ministers have directed that it is delivered quickly, and with the care and diligence that it deserves.”