The second alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump bears striking similarities to the shooting death of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico by a Kiev militant gunman who strongly criticised his anti-war comments.
An activist with a strong interest in Russian aggression in Ukraine is the prime suspect in what is being investigated as an assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, the second time pro-Kiev extremists have plotted to kill a prominent Western politician this year.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday afternoon after security officers found a rifle barrel protruding from bushes near where Trump was playing on a golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Routh has previously visited Ukraine and said he wanted to recruit foreign fighters for the cause.
On May 15, just four months before the assassination attempt on President Trump, gunman Juraj Cintula approached Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico as he was meeting with members of the public following a rally at his local town hall. Cintula, a left-wing poet and activist, pulled out a handgun and fired five shots at Fico at close range.
The Slovak leader was wounded in the abdomen, hip, arm and leg, and his small intestine was punctured in five places. Fico nearly died after the shooting, but was taken by helicopter to hospital where emergency services performed emergency surgery and saved his life.
Chintula was arrested at the scene and quickly confessed to police. He told officers that he had intended to shoot Fito because of his views on the Ukrainian war. He also said that he believed that shooting Fito would ensure that he would no longer be prime minister and that the position would be handed over to someone with a more pro-Ukrainian stance. According to reports at the time:
While Chintula said he opposed some of Fito's policies and political reforms, the document said the perpetrator's main complaint was the government's refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine. The document said the perpetrator's “main desire is military aid for Ukraine” and that he was concerned that Fito's government was viewed by the European Union as “Judas.”
Mr Fico won Slovakia's elections last year on a pledge to extricate the country from Ukraine's war, which he has argued is better resolved through negotiations rather than fighting, even if it means Ukraine ceding some territory to Moscow.
Prime Minister Fitcho has not spoken out about this latest attempted shooting of Donald Trump, but he did release a lengthy memoir about the shooting of President Trump in the ear at a campaign rally in July. In his remarks, Prime Minister Fitcho said the shooting of Trump was a “copycat” of his own shooting and blamed his political opponents for creating a febrile atmosphere of hatred that led to attempts to kill politicians.
The Prime Minister said at the time: [Donald Trump] “They will try to silence him, and when that fails, they will antagonize the people so much that the losers will pick up their guns.” And those same politicians who incited the violence in the first place will be the first to call for “reconciliation, appeasement and forgiveness” after the attacks, Fico said.
President Trump made strikingly similar statements this week when reflecting on Sunday's attack, saying he believes the gunman “believed what Biden and Harris said and followed what they said,” adding, “I'm being shot at because of what they said. I'm in a position to save my country. They're destroying it from the inside out.”
He remains a suspect in the recent “assassination attempt” on President Trump, but his extremely hardline views on the Ukraine conflict have been widely reported.
A serial Democratic donor, Routh has been highly active online over the years and has left a sizable “document” trail, including social media posts in which he declared he was “prepared to fight and die for Ukraine,” as well as a self-published book. Ukraine's Unwinnable WarIn it, he calls President Trump a “fool” and a “clown” and calls on Iran to consider assassinating him.
Routh, who professes to have the answers for how to defeat Russia, writes in the preface: “…Ukraine will not win on its current path, but its victory is essential for the world, and that is why this book is so important for all of us to realize that losing is not an option and that we must do what we must to win.”
Online, Routh touted his attempts to recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine, even visiting the country in 2022 after the Russian invasion. Whether or not his attempts were serious, a Ukrainian military source cited on Monday claimed his overtures were rejected by the Kiev government as a fantasy rather than a realistic plan.
Ukraine was one of the first European countries to express sympathy for President Trump after Sunday's attack this week, reaffirming its position that political violence has no place in a democracy. The strong words came despite Ukraine's boasting in recent months of carrying out political assassinations of its own citizens it labeled as “collaborators.” Meanwhile, Russia has sought to gain political advantage from the arrest of Ryan Wesley Routh, claiming it was a Ukrainian government operation but providing no evidence to support its case.
