Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday responded to the second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump by suggesting it was a natural consequence of the United States supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
When asked what the Kremlin thought about the incident, Peskov snapped, “It is not us who should be thinking, it is the U.S. intelligence services who should be thinking.”
“In any case, playing with fire has its consequences,” he added.
Peskov was alluding to evidence that Ryan Wesley Routh, widely identified as the suspect in the second assassination attempt against Trump, is an energetic supporter of Ukraine and may have plotted to kill Trump because he believes U.S. support for Ukraine would diminish under a second Trump administration.
Routh, 58, gave an interview about his Ukraine activism to the New York Times (NYT) last year. In the interview, Routh said he was in Washington to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a.k.a. The Helsinki Commission, to press the U.S. Congress for more financing for Ukraine’s war effort.
Routh appears to have written social media posts in which he volunteered to fight for Ukraine and he has threatened violent reprisals against those who disagree with him.
“I am coming to Ukraine from Hawaii to fight for your kids and families and democracy … I will come and die for you,” he allegedly said in one social media post. Later in 2022, he allegedly said he presented himself to the Ukrainian military as a volunteer but was turned down due to his age and lack of military experience.
“A lot of the other conflicts are gray but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil,” he said in a June 2022 interview with Newsweek Romania, when he was ostensibly in Kyiv trying to round up other foreign volunteers for the Ukrainian military.
The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Unit International Legion, which is composed of foreign volunteers, issued a statement on Monday insisting that Routh has “no relation to the unit” and rumors to the contrary “disseminated in certain media are not true.”
Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, which has long been identified as having Nazi sympathies, also disavowed any links to Routh in response to a social media video that claimed the presumed would-be shooter participated in a 2022 public event to support the brigade.
“We believe that the spread of the narrative about the possible connection between Azov and Ryan Wesley Routh is playing along with Russian propaganda,” the Azov Brigade said.
Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation on Monday also said the attempt on Trump’s life has become a “topic for Russian propaganda.”
Dmitri Peskov said on Monday that Russia is “monitoring” the situation in the United States.
“We see how tense the situation is there, including between political competitors. The political struggle is escalating, and a variety of methods are being used,” he said.