Ryan Routh is the owner of Camp Box Honolulu construction company and has a criminal record. Since 2018, he has been building low-cost homes on wheels to help the homeless in the US get housing. In 2019, he gave one of the houses to the residents of Hawaii for free.
Ryan Routh (first right) with his son (next to Ryan) and workers at his construction company, 2021.
campboxhonolulu.com / «Бабель»
In the USA, he was brought to criminal responsibility several times. As one of the Guilford police officers recalls, in December 2002, she stopped Ryanʼs car near his workshop because she knew that the police had revoked his driverʼs license. In addition, Ryan was previously accused of "actions related to weapons and explosives."
Ryan pointed a gun at the policewoman and drove into the yard in front of the workshop, keeping her in his sights. He barricaded himself in the building — a "big fight" with the first responders lasted about three hours. In the end, the police arrested Ryan and seized an automatic machine gun, which he possessed illegally.
Later, Ryan was charged with hit and run and possession of stolen goods. In 2019, the police evicted Ryan and two other people from the house, probably due to the fact that they lived in it without the ownerʼs permission.
In April 2022, Ryan came to Kyiv. At first he wanted to "go to the border of Ukraine, become a volunteer, fight and die." But he was not accepted into the foreign legion because of his age and lack of military experience. Therefore, he settled in a dormitory attached to a military unit in Kyiv to "find more fighters."
In Kyiv, Ryan created the "International Volunteer Center" — pitched a tent on Independence Square and hung the flags of the countries from which the volunteers who died at the front came. As Ryan writes in his own book, at the same time he stuck flags with the names of fallen Ukrainian soldiers into the ground and left a book for people to share stories about the fallen.
The flags that Ryan placed on Independence Square in the first weeks of the invasion. Ryan at one of the rallies for bringing attention to Ukraine. Kyiv, 2022.
Ukraine's Unwinnable War / «Бабель»; gofundme.com / «Бабель»
Probably, it was Ryan who started the flag memorial on Independence Square. His fiancee also mentioned this when she opened a collection on GoFundMe in May 2022. She also wrote that Ryan had sent 120 drones and his own tactical equipment to the front.
After living in Ukraine for five months, Ryan became disillusioned with Ukrainians and the government. In the book, he writes that the Kyiv police repeatedly destroyed his volunteer headquarters, although he had verbal permission from the Kyiv City Administration. Ukrainians removed his tent on the Maidan and posters in one of the parks.
Ryanʼs tent on Independence Square.
Ukraine's Unwinnable War / «Бабель»
In a few days, Ryan went out to protest to free the Azov troops, who were besieged in Mariupol. According to him, all participants were arrested. When the police found out he was American, he was "released and chased away." Recently, the Azov brigade denied any involvement of Ryan in its processes.
Ryan writes: after that, he was "no longer allowed" on the Independence Square, so he moved his headquarters to Sofia Square in a kilometer, where soon the flags of foreign fighters were torn down by "an unknown woman who hates Taiwan" and hung a Ukrainian flag instead.
In the summer of 2022, Ryan assembled a team of engineers and builders to create his own drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces — but the project failed. As Ryan mentions in the book, engineers from England, Azerbaijan, Iran, Ukraine and the USA shared ideas with him. But at the implementation stage, "all brilliant minds and motivation faded."
In addition, "the Ukrainian partners did not like everything about these ideas, progress and work", and they did not offer help to improve the project. Ryan writes that there was always "an arrogance and selfishness that prevented the partnership from moving forward" in the meetings.
In the end, the American assembled the drone on his own. However, he was forbidden to test drones in Kyiv. He had to go to Mykolaiv to test drones on the front line.
Ryanʼs workshop where he assembled drones. Ryan does not say in the book whether he bought these drones or assembled them himself.
Ukraine's Unwinnable War / «Бабель»
Ryan was also not allowed to launch drones in the combat zone. After several meetings, he realized that "cooperation with Ukrainians will not work."
“Itʼs time to get rid of the [drone] prototypes and tools and go home. I gave all the motivation and energy I could muster for Ukraine, and I was left empty-handed," writes Ryan.
In the USA, he continued to work on another project — a foreign battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces made up of Afghans who are hiding from the Taliban. He wrote on Facebook that he was negotiating with the Ukrainian government, in particular with the then Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov and Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov. Ryan also promised that the US Embassy in Ukraine would finance the project if the Ukrainian Defense Ministry gave them a detailed spending plan.
In the posts, Ryan called on those willing to serve to send him a copy of their passport, personal data and resume, which he allegedly submitted to the Ukrainian government for consideration. Volunteers also had to pay for their visa and travel to Ukraine on their own. In social networks, Ryan was accused of fraud and said that he was in no way connected with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Later, the International Legion Main Department of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine confirmed that the American had no relation to the unit.
In March 2023, Ryan told a journalist of The New York Times that he made a list of hundreds of Afghans whom he wanted to smuggle to Ukraine from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan — according to him, he "forged their passports and bribed corrupt people."
In Washington and Kyiv to find soldiers for war, Ryanʼs 2022 post.
Ryan also said that he spoke for two hours with representatives of the Helsinki Commission in Washington to "get more support for Ukraine." But there is no confirmation of this.
In his last Facebook post in July 2024, Ryan wrote that he was "still trying to get Ukraine to accept Afghan soldiers." All of Ryanʼs social media pages are currently blocked.
In 2023, Ryan published the book "Ukraineʼs Unwinnable War" — about the fact that the world should not hope for the victory of Ukraine. He writes that if "Ukrainians lacked the intelligence to knock out the Russians for eight years," then it is impossible to imagine that they would have the unity to win. His prediction: the war in Ukraine will last no less than "twenty or thirty years" and will become "a way of life acceptable to Ukraine and the whole world."
At the same time, Ryan calls on the West to end the war — otherwise, Ukraine will profit from aid for decades. He writes that Ukrainians are constantly stealing international aid. For example, they sell tanks and equipment of foreigners, he claims. That is why there is "no motivation to win or end the conflict" in Ukraine.
Ryan blames not only Russians, but also Ukrainians support the full-scale invasion. Ukraine and its Western partners allowed "the war to drag on for 8 years" and "sent Putin an invitation to invade," Ryan writes. He believes that "the conflict could have been ended by a decisive vote", the population of the regions should have decided for themselves whether they would be governed by "democracy or communism".
Ryanʼs poster on Sofia Square, Kyiv, 2022. Ryan at a protest to free Azov troops who were besieged in Mariupol, April 2022.
Ukraine's Unwinnable War / «Бабель»
Ryan writes that the foreign volunteers are not at war with the Russians, but with the Ukrainians and "their communist thinking" — they have to constantly explain the benefits of freedom and democracy. In his opinion, Ukrainians are "absolutely alien to the idea that you can do something for free." In addition, they were raised by "children of communists from Russia", who taught them to "hate democracy, the USA, free enterprise and the whole world."
"We foreigners cannot allow ourselves to lose the battle with Ukrainians and their remaining communist thinking. We must be the ones to win this battle," he writes in the book.
Ryan calls himself "a loser who allowed communism [in Ukraine] to wear him down and send him home." According to him, there are almost 6,000 Afghan soldiers and 10,000 soldiers of the "Free Syrian Army" who are ready to go to Ukraine. But "the USA and Ukraine do not allow him to coordinate their work in Ukraine."
Evelyn Aschenbrenner, an ex-employee of the International Legion, calls Ryan "a bigot and a liar." He wrote to her for more than two years and called for the illegal transfer of Afghans to the front. When she refused, Ryan accused her of not wanting to help Ukraine.
Aschenbrenner says: the man had "mania of grandeur" and was "very detached from reality", and everything he did "was absolutely disastrous for Ukraine".
Ryan with a poster in Kyiv, 2022.
Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.
Babel calls to support independent journalism. In case of refusal, we will not blame you for anything, but your donation will really help a lot: https://babel.ua/donate.