RYan Routh, the suspected gunman who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course over the weekend, was well-known but not respected in the foreign fighter community he was trying to help in Ukraine. According to three of his contacts there, he spent much of his time in Kyiv over the past three years pushing a half-baked plan to recruit soldiers for the Ukrainian army from the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

“I have 40 or 50 men sitting around waiting for a logical place to fight,” he wrote in a message to one of his contacts in Ukraine in early July 2022, a few months after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. “I dug the trenches for the Ukrainians,” he added.

The offer of help was rejected, as were many of Routh’s apparent attempts to address personnel shortages in Ukraine’s armed forces, according to correspondence with Routh shared with TIME by two of his contacts in Ukraine. In media interviews long before his arrest on Sunday, Routh spoke openly about his recruitment efforts in Ukraine, including to The New York Times. Just and Semafor.

His private messages, which have not yet been made public, date from summer 2022 to fall 2023 and appear to contain lists of soldiers from the Arab world that Routh allegedly recruited. “No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before,” an official from the Ukrainian International Legion wrote in November 2022 in response to Routh’s offers of help. “These countries are banned for a reason.”

Later that day, Routh wrote back: “How about Afghanistan???”

One of his acquaintances in Ukraine says Routh did have some success recruiting fighters for a unit of the International Legion, a military force Ukraine created at the start of the invasion to attract volunteers from around the world. But the commander of the 2nd International Legion, Colonel Ruslan Miroshnichenko, denied ever accepting Routh’s help.

“His actions and attitude very often did not correspond to the official policy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces regarding recruitment for international legions,” Miroshnichenko told TIME on Monday.

Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday after Secret Service agents spotted him loitering in the tree line surrounding Trump’s Florida golf course. The Republican presidential candidate was playing the fifth hole when one of the security guards shot Routh. After his arrest, investigators found a loaded rifle with a scope that Routh allegedly left behind when he fled the scene. He was charged with federal weapons crimes at a court appearance Monday.

He has documented his views on the war in Ukraine in detail in his social media posts and in a self-published book entitled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War.” In it, according to the Associated Press, he discusses geopolitics and denounces Trump as “brainless.” At one point in the book, he is said to have written about Iran: “They can assassinate Trump at any time.”

The public defender assigned to Routh’s case on Monday did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.

People who knew Routh in Kyiv say he made frequent and eccentric appearances in the center of the Ukrainian capital and in the city’s community of foreign military volunteers. One of them said Routh was “basically homeless” in Kyiv, sometimes staying at bases or barracks of Ukrainian military units that allowed him to stay there.

Colonel Miroshnichenko recounted how he met Routh one day in Kyiv’s Independence Square in spring 2022. He was “waving the American flag, smiling, cheering” and struck up a conversation with Miroshnichenko, apparently because the officer was wearing a military uniform. When Routh put forward his ideas about recruiting, the officer urged him to use official military channels rather than develop “improvised plans” to fill the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

“He was not a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the time,” says Miroshnichenko. “This person voluntarily tried to recruit some foreigners into some military units in the spring of 2022. Perhaps he partially succeeded. But he had no authority to do so. He did it himself. And his actions often did not correspond to official Ukrainian military policy.”

A year and a half later, Routh was still trying to reach out to senior Ukrainian officials and win them over to his recruitment strategy. By this point, the tone in his conversations with some recruiters and officers of the International Legion had become increasingly tense, even hostile. In a message in early November 2023, Routh claims that U.S. intelligence—the very agency that arrested him on Sunday—could help him review the military records of the soldiers he hoped to recruit from Afghanistan and other countries.

“All of these soldiers have worked with US and coalition forces, so their track record is easy to see,” he wrote. “All we need is Ukrainian visas, we can take care of the rest.”

After receiving a clear rejection from a military recruiter in Ukraine, Routh sarcastically replied, “So you have a lot of soldiers… good deal… when are we going to win this war??”