The son of the man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday said his father traveled to Ukraine and volunteered to provide what the son described as “humanitarian” aid to troops defending the country against Russian forces invading in 2022.

“My dad went there and f***ing saw people fight and die,” Oran Routh said in a brief phone call when asked about his father, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh. “He … tried to make sure shit was cool and shit wasn’t cool.”

Referring to the former president, who had failed to answer at the presidential debate a few days earlier whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, Oran Routh said, “In the meantime, this guy sits behind his damn desk and does nothing damned.”

The younger Routh has repeatedly said that he has not been able to speak directly to his father or obtain information about the allegations against him, so he did not want to speak on his behalf.

But a review of Twitter/X posts linked to an account under Ryan Routh’s name shows that Ukraine was a major concern for him. Two posts on that account from August 2023 were directed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. One said Routh was in Kyiv and wanted to set up a tent city for foreigners in a local park, hoping it would attract more people from abroad to “gather major support and equipment.”

The other side said that Zelensky had asked Congress to grant paid leave to all members of the US military “so that they can fight in Ukraine as civilians.”

A third post – from December – said thousands of Afghan soldiers were ready to serve Haiti’s national police for low pay as the Caribbean nation’s authorities have struggled with violent unrest since the president’s assassination in 2021.

In his recent debate with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the White House on November 5, Trump mentioned both Ukraine and Haiti.

Regarding the latter country, the Republican candidate simply said he wanted the war between Ukraine and Russia to “stop.”

But he explicitly avoided saying he wanted Ukraine to win, raising renewed fears that a second Trump presidency could cut off military support for those defending the country. The U.S. has provided $175 billion in military aid to Ukraine, although Trump convinced his Republican colleagues to block some of that crucial funding for months earlier this year.

When asked what he would say to his father if he could talk to him, Oran Routh said: “I know that discourse is not working, but we still have to stick to discourse.”

Oran Routh then politely excused himself from the conversation to try to find out more information about his father’s arrest on Sunday.

Online records show that a man with the same name and age as Routh is registered to vote in North Carolina and lists his party affiliation as Democrat. Those records show that he last voted in North Carolina’s presidential primary in March.

However, many on X noted that the political views espoused by the account under Routh’s name were not exclusively pro-Democratic in nature. The account described voting for Trump in 2016 and advocated for a ticket that includes unsuccessful Republican presidential primary candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

The account’s most recent post was directed at Harris and appeared between the failed assassination attempt on Trump on July 13 at a political rally in Pennsylvania and the time when she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic nomination list after the president decided to end his re-election campaign.

The post said Harris and Biden were scheduled to visit the two injured bystanders and attend the funeral of a third rally attendee who was killed in the shooting in which Trump suffered an ear injury and the attacker was struck down by a Secret Service sniper.

“Show the world what compassion and humanity means,” the post said.

Ryan Routh is suspected of pushing the muzzle of a rifle through a fence in a wooded area of ​​the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump was golfing on Sunday afternoon. An agent spotted the rifle and fired, and the suspect fled before being arrested in a neighboring county.

Investigators said they recovered an AK-47-style rifle, a telescopic sight and a video camera attached to a fence alongside two backpacks after what they described as an apparent murder attempt.

Harris condemned Ryan Routh’s alleged actions on Sunday, saying, among other things, “Violence has no place in America.” Her colleague Chuck Schumer, majority leader in the US Senate, agreed with this statement and added, “The perpetrator must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”