The more Chelsea Walsh talked to the eccentric fellow American who seemed to pop up in every square and cobblestone street of Ukraine’s capital, the more she got creeped out.

Walsh was in Kyiv as a nurse and aid worker in the early days of the war in Ukraine. Ryan Routh was there to recruit foreign soldiers to fight the Russians. But Walsh never saw him make much progress and instead watched him grow increasingly angry and unhinged, kicking a panhandler, threatening to burn down a music studio that slighted him and speaking of his own children with seething hatred.