MOSCOW, September 16. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova highlighted a Ukraine-related part of life of Ryan Wesley Routh, a suspect in the attempted assassination of US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

She pointed to data collected by two reporters that showed the man used to be involved in recruiting Afghan soldiers for serving in the Ukrainian military.

"Back in March 2023, New York Times reporters Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons scrutinized more than 100 pages of documents about American 'volunteer groups' in Ukraine and interviewed more than 30 mercenaries, fundraisers, donors of the Ukrainian military, US and Ukrainian officials," Zakharova said in a post on Telegram. "Among the biographies they compiled of the worst swindlers and fraudsters is the name of - guess who - Ryan Routh, the gunman who was waiting for Donald Trump outside the golf club. The former construction worker from Greensboro latched on to the idea of supplying ‘cannon fodder’ for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and began looking for recruits among former Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban (the group is banned in Russia - TASS) to neighboring countries. He was going to smuggle them to Ukraine from Iran and Pakistan and even boasted that he planned to buy fake passports there because Pakistan ‘is a very corrupt country.’"

"As follows from the story, Routh got himself a great company of his fellow countrymen for the Ukrainian affairs," the diplomat said, before giving several examples.

According to Zakharova, US officials "confessed to journalists that, according to regulations, they spend only 10 minutes to check the documents of a potential foreign fighter."

"That means that absolutely anyone can end up in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces and get access to firearms and explosives," she said. "This is why they shoot down airplanes that carry their POWs and donated US-made F-16s. This is also why Russia is ringing all the bells to draw attention to the problem of nuclear power plants being systematically shelled by the Kiev regime."

According to the diplomat, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky "doesn’t just attract incompetent rabble to Ukraine like a magnet, but outright scumbags are also joining the ranks of his neo-Nazi fighters."

"Western readers of the New York Times and everyone else should be aware about the flip side of the West's diverse 'aid' to Ukrainian Nazis," the diplomat said. "Even at the level of such ‘grassroots activists.’ And they should think hard about what these people, who are devoid of the least bit of conscience, will do in their homeland when they get bored of playing defenders of independent Ukraine."

"By the way, those of them who survive will then return to the United States. And they will pick up where Routh left off - shooting at their own people," Zakharova said.