The mad, bad, sad world of Ryan Routh 

Any journalist who has covered a war will recognise Ryan Routh’s type immediately – the war zone nutter.

Routh is currently all over America’s front pages, accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

The photograph used by most news outlets shows a grizzled-looking character with a flak vest, a stars-and-stripes neckerchief, and a troubled stare.

Back in 2022, he travelled from his home in the US to Ukraine, shortly after Russia invaded. He ended up in Independence Square in Kiev, setting up an open-air camp adorned with flags and handwritten placards – open air camps with placards being another reliable sign of nutterdom. But then warzones have always attracted the mad, the bad and the sad.

Before he left home, Routh tweeted: ‘I am going to fight and die for Ukraine.’ When he got there, he didn’t actually join the Ukrainian armed forces – and a Ukraine official told me there was no record of him even trying.