KYIV — The man accused of pointing a gun at former president Donald Trump traveled to Ukraine in 2022 to help recruit foreigners for its defense, but a representative of the country’s International Legion at the time said it did not find him useful.

       Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of trying to assassinate Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, on a Florida golf course. He was charged Monday with two gun-related crimes. In recent years, according to a picture that emerges from his online activity and accounts of his interactions with journalists and activists, he began to see himself as a player on the world stage: a militant advocate for Ukraine, a self-appointed recruiter for the Ukrainian cause and a defender of Taiwan in the shadow of China.

       Evelyn Aschenbrenner, an American who served in the administration of the Ukrainian International Legion until June, said the news that he was possibly involved in an attempt to assassinate Trump did not come as a surprise, given his previous behavior.

       “There’s a streak of zealotry in him,” Aschenbrenner said. “I knew he was not firing with all pistons.”

       Aschenbrenner said Routh initially approached the Legion by text message, saying he could help direct potential fighters to it. They exchanged messages but did not meet in person, Aschenbrenner said.

       “If you know people who have verified military experience, feel free to give them my number, and I can talk to them about the proper way of joining the International Legion,” Aschenbrenner recalled telling him. But he was not deputized to recruit, the Ukrainian army volunteer said.

       In short order, however, he began to present himself as a recruiter.

       “In November of last year, I began sending out a [message] to all foreign soldiers saying, ‘This guy is not a real recruiter. He’s not legit. I don’t know what he’s up to. Just stay away from him — block and ignore and move on,’” Aschenbrenner said, adding that Routh contributed nothing to the war effort.

       “The cats and dogs on the military bases did more than he did,” Aschenbrenner said. He contributed “no logistics, no help, no donations. He talked.”

       “He didn’t get a single bag of buckwheat or rice. He didn’t donate a single sock to the army. As far as I know, he didn’t get a single actual recruit into the Legion.”

       Oleksandr Shahuri, an officer with the department of coordination of foreigners in Ukraine’s armed forces, said that Routh never met in person with “Legion officials about any kind of collaboration or work or whatever.”

       The suspect wrote a book about his failed attempt to muster a ragtag army to defend Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, according to law enforcement officials and his online data trail.

       In a video posted online in June 2022, he can be seen standing in front of a billboard in Kyiv of some 50 flags that he said represented the nationalities of people who had volunteered to fight with Ukraine.

       Routh choked up in the video as he described how the volunteers had sold all their possessions “to come here and support Ukrainians.” He continued: “This is truly heroic what these kids and adults have done getting here on their own dime.”

       In an interview with Newsweek Romania, also released in June 2022, he again appeared to grow emotional when he spoke of meeting young men fighting for Ukraine. He called it “heroism” and criticized people in other countries for focusing on their own daily challenges and not doing enough to support Ukraine. He called the war against Russian invasion forces “the most important thing going on in the world today” and said it was “about good versus evil.”

       The Legion, meanwhile, insisted Monday that he had no affiliation with it and was told repeatedly to stop what he was doing.

       “American citizen Ryan Routh has never served in the International Legion of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine [and] has no relation to the unit,” it said in a statement. “Rumors disseminated in certain media are not true.”

       The suspect said in the Newsweek interview that he initially wanted to volunteer to fight for Ukraine but was not invited to do so because of his age and lack of military experience. So he decided to support the war effort by working to recruit fighters from around the world.

       In a text message exchange provided by Aschenbrenner dated November 2023, he said, “I have thousands of Afghan soldiers if you need soldiers.” The administrative officer briefly questioned him how he was going to get the Afghans into Europe before telling him that the plan was “absurd.”

       “All you do is cause headaches for recruiters. Please stop pretending you’re helping Ukraine, and stop trying to recruit for the legion,” Aschenbrenner texted back. “Do less. Please.”

       He retorted that Ukraine had “chased away all foreign support” and that “Ukraine does not want help.”

       The suspect has also expressed support for Taiwan.

       A website named Taiwan Foreign Legion, which lists a man named Ryan Routh as the international volunteer center coordinator and the only contact, calls for international volunteers to support Taiwan in the event of a future conflict with China. On the site, Routh claims to have spent two weeks in Taiwan “going to every single government office and speaking to everyone that I could possibly find to encourage more preparation for war.”

       Taiwan’s economic and cultural office in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suspect’s possible activities on the island.

       Remus Cernea, a Romanian journalist who is listed on the Taiwan Foreign Legion website as a supporter of the effort, told The Washington Post that while he met Routh on several occasions in Ukraine and spoke with him about Taiwan, Cernea was never involved in any organization to defend Taiwan.

       “I see him like a very idealistic person,” Cernea said. “He talked about values, about freedom and about democratic values. But what he did yesterday, what he did is against the foundation of democracy because we cannot accept violence in politics.”

       In Routh’s self-published Ukraine book, he also expresses his views on Taiwan.

       “Shall we let Taiwan fall?” he writes. “We should encircle Taiwan with military ships and support with military might. If we wait, such as we have done in Ukraine, it will be a 10 minute war and we will all be standing around like fools yet again.”

       Timsit reported from London. Amar Nadhir in Bucharest, Romania, and Katrina Northrop in Washington contributed to this report.