Episode 18: How Did a 60-Year Old American Veteran Wind Up Fighting in Ukraine?

Malcolm Nance was retired from the U.S. Navy, but the Russian invasion of its neighbor compelled him to dig out his old weapons and equipment and join up with the International Legion fighting in Ukraine. He explains how the International Legion functions, what it’s like to take a direct hit from a Russian shell, and why he doesn’t believe he and his fellow legionnaires have run afoul of an 18th century law against Americans fighting in other people’s wars.

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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There's this guy I know: Malcolm Nance. Until recently, we kind of had the same gig. He wrote books about terrorism and national security — my kind of stuff. And you could probably find our books in the same section at the bookstore. We’ve also both been on-camera analysts for news networks, in his case: MSNBC. Most recently he'd been doing a lot of commentary about the Ukraine war.

But, not too long ago, he did something so unexpected, and so startling to me, that I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. And this thing he did… is probably the thing he's most famous for now. Because he announced it on national TV… in 2022, during an interview on MSNBC.

ARCHIVAL Joy Reid: Joining me now from a secure location in Western Ukraine is Malcolm Nance. So explain to us why you are there and what you are doing.

This wasn't your typical on-camera hit from a cable news analyst. Nance was rigged out in camouflage combat gear, ballistic helmet, body armor, the whole kit. And he was holding an assault rifle across his chest.

ARCHIVAL Malcolm Nance: The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, I'm done talking. All right? It's time to take action here.

Now, Nance is in his 60s. He's a brawny-looking U.S. military veteran with a great beard, but the salt is definitely out-competing the pepper, if you know what I mean. And he was announcing that he’d just joined the Ukrainian military to fight against the Russians.

ARCHIVAL Malcolm Nance: About a month ago I joined the International Legion here in Ukraine, and I am here to help this country fight what essentially is an existential war and Russia has brought it to these people and they are mass murdering civilians. And there are people here like me who are here to do something about it.

ARCHIVAL Joy Reid: What are — international troops like yourself — what are you all tasked to do?

ARCHIVAL Malcolm Nance: Well, we are here for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to protect the innocent people of Ukraine from this Russian aggression.

[BRIEF MONTAGE OF ARCHIVAL SOUNDS OF COMBAT, MISSILE STRIKES]

Just days into Russia's invasion in February, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on foreign nationals to come and join a newly formed, newly-named unit called the International Legion. The idea was to encourage combat-trained foreigners to enlist and fight for the Ukrainian military.

Nance decided to answer that call, fighting with the International Legion for most of a year. I reconnected with him to find out … why? And to take a look inside a unit that's attracted attention from around the world. Attention from fans excited by the Legion’s heroic mission, and attention from critics worried that missteps by foreign fighters in Ukraine are undermining the war effort.

Coming up, you’ll hear Nance respond to those criticisms, debate the role that foreign fighters have played in wars — past and present — and explain how a stray dog ended up joining the International Legion.

I'm Peter Bergen, and this is In the Room.

[THEME MUSIC SURGES, THEN FADES]

Peter Bergen: Malcolm, you may not remember this, but I remember the moment I met you like it was yesterday.

Malcolm Nance: I do too.

Peter Bergen: Okay, I walked into Steam Cafe, which is at 17th and R in Washington, D.C. and I used to work there all the time. And I guess you used to work there all the time. I think you were working on your first book,

Malcolm Nance: Yeah.

Peter Bergen: That has gotta have been about two decades ago.

Malcolm Nance: [NANCE LAUGHS] We're old, man. Shhh, don't tell everyone. [PETER LAUGHS]

Peter Bergen: No, well, young in spirit, let's say. Look, you went to Ukraine aged how old?

Malcolm Nance: Uh, at 60.

Peter Bergen: How was that?

Malcolm Nance: It was interesting. Let's just say when I was in the military, I kept pretty fit. And then when I came home, you know, just the crazy adventurous places you and I worked, you know, you gotta at least have your running down, right? Like they say in, "Zombieland". You gotta know, have your cardio. And, uh, Ukraine was one of those places where that was a great benefit, uh, especially with Russian artillery.

Peter Bergen: [PETER LAUGHS] I could imagine.

Malcolm Nance: When I went to Ukraine first, I, I should give you a backgrounder. I went there before the war to do an analysis of the Russian order of battle.

ARCHIVAL Malcolm Nance: I've been here a month. Been studying the Russian order of battle and the…

Malcolm Nance: The order of battle is the formations, vehicles, equipment, and manpower that would be used in an operation. I was drafting that up for my, at the time I had a think tank, which now I've abandoned, the Terror Asymmetrics Project. One thing I realized was the media had been missing a very large story, and that was, there was a Ukrainian army. And they knew how to fight and they were very experienced and very well led. And so for about three weeks I was pulling my hair out on MSNBC, going, ‘Hey, this invasion is not gonna go the way that you think it's gonna go. There's gonna be a war here, a real straight up fighting war.’

I flew out of Ukraine on the last Lufthansa flight a few hours before the Russian cruise missiles started. I landed in Dublin. It was about an hour, Z minus one hour. And, you know, I was watching Putin's speech.

[ARCHIVAL AUDIO OF PUTIN’S SPEECH]

On February 24th, 2022 the Russian president made a televised speech kicking off a “special military operation” in Ukraine. His tone was weirdly subdued, given that he was announcing the biggest invasion Europe had seen since World War II. Putin called on Ukrainian forces to lay down their weapons and go home.

Malcolm Nance: As soon as I saw this speech, I go, ‘they're already launching missiles.’ I thought about it on my flight back from Dublin where I, I had landed and I said, I, there's no way I'm gonna be able to do this as a news media person, as a commentator. I can't look myself in the mirror. And, later on, I heard this message from a friend of mine. He goes, 'Hey, our mutual friend in Avdiivka called this morning to say goodbye.'

He says this Ukrainian friend was a fellow graduate of the U.S. military's Defense Language Institute. She was in Avdiivka, a city of about 30,000 people in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. It sat right on the front line.

Malcolm Nance: And I was like, what do you mean? You know, I'm not processing it, right? And he goes, she's going to die today. She said, the assault is on. They're preparing for a final onslaught. They're going to die. And, I said, that's it. I'm not gonna allow this. And I just thought, if there's anything I can do, I'm gonna do it. So about a day later, I got back to New York City. They announced the start of the International Legion. I went, I have a weapons locker, I have an equipment locker. I emptied everything from all of my previous wars, had all of my uniforms ready, helmet, body armor, thermal optics, lasers, everything. And just prepped to go back to Ukraine. I went to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. They called me in for an interview. They took one look at my resume and they're like, you're in. We need senior NCOs to provide leadership. How fast can you get there?

Nance had experience as an NCO — a non-commissioned officer. Before becoming a writer and commentator, Nance served two decades in the U.S. Navy as an intelligence and cryptology specialist — taking part in operations in Beirut, Libya, and the first Gulf War. He speaks Russian, Arabic, and several other languages. He later worked as a military contractor during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s the father of grown children.

Peter Bergen: When you made this decision to go into Ukraine, how did your friends, how did your family react?

Malcolm Nance: Well my daughter wasn't particularly thrilled about the idea. And my family kept thinking, you know, do you have some sort of death wish? I tried to explain it very carefully. I'd spent my entire life defending this nation, trying to be involved in operations for the good of the world and democracy. And this was just a flagrant slap in the face to what I call the eastern wall of democracy.

Peter Bergen: What was the actual conversation you had with your daughter? [NANCE GROANS] Did she say, dad, you know, this is completely crazy shit. Or what did she say?

Malcolm Nance: You know, the one thing that really cut to me was she said, what would mom think about this? And look, I'm a relatively recent widower…

Nance's wife of 15 years, Maryse Beliveau-Nance, a landscape architect known for designing parks in the U.S. and Canada, died in 2019 after a battle with cancer.

Malcolm Nance: My wife, she would understand this and she'd say, look, you've gotta go. You've got all that gear down in the basement. You might want to take it all with you, but you know, don't do anything stupid. And while I was there, I would wear her actual winter socks, these Canadian winter socks when I was in combat.

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Peter Bergen: The name the International Legion evokes both the French Foreign Legion and also the international brigades who fought against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Do you think that name was intentional or how did it come about?

Malcolm Nance: I don't know if it was intentional, I think they thought it up on the fly. But it was brilliant. The Legion itself is a volunteer force, made up of people from 52 different nations. The Legion members are all sworn and contracted members of the Ukrainian army. It operates three battalions.

Peter Bergen: Just so listeners understand, three battalions means how many people?

Malcolm Nance: Several hundred per battalion.

Peter Bergen: Do these battalions have specialties?

Malcolm Nance: Two are infantry and one is special operations. You are not just you know what you and I would've called MWRs, right? Men with rifles,

Peter Bergen: Yeah.

Malcolm Nance: You had to have combat experience, you had to have military experience. Yes, some slipped through the cracks, but I would say 99 percent did have military experience and maybe 80 percent had real combat experience. They formed rather hastily. They had to, you know, use Ukrainian officers that spoke English.

Peter Bergen: Walk us through the process, when you signed up, what happens when you arrive, who meets you? How do they vet you? How does that all go down?

Malcolm Nance: Well for those of you who are willing to join the Legion now, we're still recruiting. This war's not over, and it won't be over for another year or more. But to join the Legion, you fly yourself to Warsaw. You take the train down to Rzeszów or you can fly down to Rzeszów. You can get a bus over to Medyka and you can cross at Medyka border crossing. You will be met by the passport lady and then a member of the Internal Security Unit, the SBU.They will ask you why you're there and you will say, I'm here to fight in the Legion and help Ukraine. They will do a quick background check on the SBU's database. They will send you through, and there's a tent at the end called the International Legion tent. They will bring you there.

You'll sit there for the day until they get a bus full of people and then they will drive you up to a military base where you will be vetted again about your military background, your experience.Now we actually send a background check out to, uh, Europol and Interpol so that if there are any Red Notices on you or the FBI wants you… We unfortunately had an idiot, we had a guy who was wanted in the United States for two homicides. When I found he was in the Legion, I made sure he got kicked out of the Legion the same day.

After background vetting, Nance said International Legion recruits are issued gear and go through some training to supplement their skills.

ARCHIVAL Legion Officer: To kill Russian by your rifle, is it clear?

ARCHIVALLegion Trainees: Yes sir.

For Nance, it was learning to shoot shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles known as Javelins.

[ARCHIVAL SOUND OF A JAVELIN FIRING]

Malcolm Nance: And when I went to Javelin school, the Javelin instructor had these Ukrainian BDUs, battle dress uniform, that was like almost faded white. And he wore his hat in this U.S. Army Ranger style. And I was like, this is the oldest instructor in Ukraine, right? This guy looks like a U.S. Army Master Sergeant. He walks like a U.S. Army Master Sergeant. This guy had, at the time that I went through the course, which was in April, his students had almost 500 Javelin kills. All right? One guy, his students, and they were reporting back and giving them lessons learned. And I was like, man, this guy is, is like the saltiest guy in Ukraine, but he typifies the future of the Ukrainian army. U.S.-, NATO-trained, a man that is master of his craft and his craft was killing tanks. This is the most experienced ground combat army in the world right now.

[ARCHIVAL SOUND OF A JAVELIN FIRING]

[MUSIC BRIEFLY INTENSIFIES]

But Nance says the training period…didn’t last long.

Malcolm Nance: They put you through training, assign you to a battalion, you will usually move very quickly out to the Kharkiv front and get your introduction to artillery 101.

Peter Bergen: Russian artillery, tell me about it.

Malcolm Nance: Russian artillery was my full-time job. [NANCE LAUGHS]

Peter Bergen: Avoiding it and detecting it?

Malcolm Nance: Oh, avoiding it was everyone's job, believe me. I had been in Lebanon when I was a young sailor in 1983, and I had seen these multiple rocket launch attacks and, you know, being on the tail end of those was interesting. But nothing like what was going on in Ukraine. This was Soviet level, World War II amounts of solid steel flying through the air with the intent to throw shrapnel through your body and rip you to pieces.

Peter Bergen: So when do you know your number is up? Is it when you can't hear it?

Malcolm Nance: It's very true. I've been pretty close within a hundred meters. And, you know, it was helmets down, body down.

Peter Bergen: Were you frightened?

Malcolm Nance: Oh yeah. [NANCE LAUGHS]

Peter Bergen: What was the closest of the close calls?

[MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS OF COMBAT]

Malcolm Nance: I was actually at a headquarters and we had a 203 millimeter cannon that flew a shell 36 kilometers to directly hit us. Direct hit on our headquarters at four in the morning, and the first round hit us. It smashed everything. And I knew, I was like, this is bad. And as soon as I got up, I started shouting for everyone, put your helmet and your armor on. And by the time I got up, put my helmet and armor on, the second round hit us, direct hit. I mean, blew through three floors of concrete, smashed.... Things were flying everywhere. And my first comment was, ‘Well, this isn't good.’No one got killed, but literally everything in that building flew past my head. Wounded a couple of guys, set the building on fire, you know, this is the equivalent of an eight inch naval gun like we were shooting at Iwo Jima.You know, nothing's worse than something coming out of the sky and just rocking your world while you're trying to get a cup of coffee.

Peter Bergen: [PETER LAUGHS] Were you talking to your daughter during this time period and giving her updates or what were you doing in terms of communicating with your family?

Malcolm Nance: I didn't tell her a thing, [BOTH LAUGH] which, you crazy?

Peter Bergen: So are Ukrainian officers issuing orders? How does that work?

Malcolm Nance: Yeah, each battalion is led by a Ukrainian officer. Each team or platoon is led by a Ukrainian officer. Then, the sub platoons are led by western sergeants, who have the rank of sergeant. And then below that you have squads and fire teams that are all westerners.

Peter Bergen: You said, 52 nationalities. So how is everybody communicating?

Malcolm Nance: The official language is English. We prefer to take people with English. In my special operations platoon, we had 12 Colombians. And when we formed that team, I had to teach in four languages. I had to teach in Spanish, English, French, and Italian.

Peter Bergen: What was a typical day like for you? If there was one.

Malcolm Nance: When I was with First Battalion, I would get up around 3:30, 4:00 AM and find out what the situation of the battlefront was. I would start going through intelligence reports, usually around 4:00 to 5:00 AM we would get our first major, heavy shells of the day, but mostly I would get my people together, weapons and equipment checks always first thing in the morning. Then, you know, dealing with whatever the situation of the day is. That changed when I went into special operations, was constant, constant, constant checking your equipment, planning operations, studying where the Russians were.

We usually operated five to 10 kilometers behind their lines. So working our infiltration routes. There's no helicopters coming for you. There's no inserting by fast rope. You have to patrol in, If you make contact, it's gonna suck. We had a lot of reconnaissance missions where they were like, do not get into a fight, cuz all you're gonna have is about 10 rounds of artillery support. It wasn't always firefights. One day I was laying in these bushes and these rockets came zooming over us, missed us by about 200 meters, and out of nowhere, in three bounds comes a black dog that literally jumped into my arms while I'm laying there, and it was so weird, I took my phone out and took a photograph of it and the dog would not leave us. So we brought him back all the way from behind enemy lines and he now is in our headquarters. [BOTH LAUGH]

Peter Bergen: Was any of this fun?

Malcolm Nance: [NANCE LAUGHS] Everyone lies about this question. Oh, it was reams of fun.

One moment that Nance particularly savored came during a Ukrainian counter offensive in the Northeastern Kharkiv region in September, 2022.

Malcolm Nance: Okay, this is a good story. We had spent weeks training for this mission, prepping for this mission.

Expecting a Ukrainian offensive down south, Russia had reinforced its positions there. When the real attack came, it concentrated on the northeast, and overwhelmed the Russian Army's undermanned lines. By one estimate, Ukrainian forces recaptured 2,500 square kilometers of territory in the Kharkiv region in the early days of September. The Washington Post described parts of that battle as “a stunning rout for Russia.

Nance says his International Legion infantry unit was initially tasked with holding a position far ahead of Ukrainian heavy artillery. But Ukrainian forces moved so quickly into Russian-held territory that Nance said the big guns unexpectedly caught up with the frontline ground troops.

Malcolm Nance: The Russian line collapsed so fast between 6:00 AM and about 10:00 AM, that they were bringing artillery, just running it up as fast as they could, up to the actual line of kickoff. And now our tanks and mechanized infantry was pushing through and bypassing us, which was the furthest edge of the battlefront. We sat there in this old bunker that faced the Russian positions that were about two kilometers away. And suddenly mechanized, self-propelled artillery rolled right up to our position.

Nance said it was a 27-ton, self-propelled howitzer. That's a tracked vehicle with a gun turret that looks a lot like a tank. But it wears thinner armor and carries a much bigger cannon. Because of that, artillery pieces like this more typically fire from protected positions many miles back from the front lines.

Malcolm Nance: And we thought they’re supposed to be 20 kilometers that way. Why is this artillery piece here? We are literally the zero line, we're the forward edge of the battle area and we're like, where’d this artillery come from?

So Nance whipped out his phone and filmed a video of himself while the cannon fired over his shoulder.

[ARCHIVAL SOUND OF THE HOWITZER FIRING]

ARCHIVAL Malcolm Nance: There you go! What now bitches? Shit's coming down.

Nance says he later got permission to post the video on social media and that's where Russian TV found it and broadcast it, falsely claiming it was evidence of NATO troops fighting on the ground.

[ARCHIVAL SOUND OF TV HOST DISCUSSING “AMERICAN MERCENARIES” IN RUSSIAN]

Malcolm Nance: They portrayed this as this is a NATO officer who is here fighting Russian forces. Here he is: Black, speaks English, you know, shooting a NATO artillery piece behind him.It was laughable, but I don't know who they're trying to convince. Are they trying to convince some little old lady in, you know, in Petropavlovsk that, you know, big bad Black NATO officers are there? ‘Cause, if NATO was actually there, there would be no Russian army. They would cut through them like a scythe in a matter of a week.

Negative attention isn’t just coming from Russia. Recently, several English-language media outlets have also criticized groups of foreign fighters in Ukraine, including the International Legion.

The accusations include misusing resources, recruiting leaders unfit for command, and enlisting soldiers who've exaggerated, or even fabricated their past military experience. In March 2023, the New York Times ran a story about several foreign fighters who'd lied about their backgrounds or showed up unfit to fight. The Times told a story of disorganization, misspent donation money, and bickering within a patchwork of formal and informal foreign fighter groups in Ukraine. It suggested that the problems have hurt efforts to recruit skilled foreigners to come fight. Nance pushed back on all this, quite hard.

Malcolm Nance: The New York Times story was trash, pure trash. The journalist who wrote the article, went and he found four or five American examples out of thousands that have served honorably, that are literally risking their lives.

The Times stood behind its piece unreservedly when we asked for comment, emailing to say, “The reporting for this story was thorough, responsible and accurate.”

Nance says that — in his view — some of the worst examples in the Times’ story were so-called freelance recruits. Those were recruits who'd shown up to fight in Ukraine informally and were never part of the International Legion.He says the Legion does its best to vet troubled or ineffective recruits before they sign up — or they get sent home once they're found out. He says that’s eventually what happened with an under-qualified, unreliable American who was mentioned in the Times story and who later defected to Russia.

Malcolm Nance: He was mentally ill. He broke when he was on the line. He should have been put out the Legion much earlier. He remained in country, fought with another militia unit. And then left Ukraine voluntarily, legally, and then went to Russia claiming he's a super spy. This guy was not a super spy! Alright? This guy was a moron, and he's some FSB’s officer's problem, not mine.But you know what they didn't write about? They didn't write about any of the now 30 legionnaires that were killed in combat, including that very day that article came out.

Nance says the man who died at that time was a close friend of his.

Malcolm Nance: My team leader, Ghost — Polish special forces officer — he'd been in Ukraine, five years, he was killed that day. His motto, when you would join that team, he'd sit you down, he'd go, 'Malcolm, there is only one way.' And he'd hold his finger up like there is only one way to Valhalla. And he would point upwards and he would say, you want to go to Valhalla? You gotta die. That guy's combat philosophy was we make contact, we throw everything at them.He's an incredible commander. There are people who are risking their lives here, and The New York Times thought that high school level gossip was what the American public needed, above the fold, on page one. There are a lot of stories to write about in Ukraine. That wasn't one of them. It's an insult to what's actually happening out there.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

But what exact role the International Legion will end up playing in the war happening out there remains to be seen. There's no doubting the bravery of Americans and other foreigners putting their lives on the line in Ukraine.

But there can be unintended consequences of Americans fighting in foreign wars that the U.S. military is not fighting itself. They're not part of a formal U.S. military structure with its rules, norms, and laws. And sometimes this kind of volunteerism can get really tricky. Take the case of Ali Mohamed, a U.S. Army Sergeant who instructed Special Forces soldiers at Fort Bragg during the 1980s.

Mohamed would use his Army leave to fight alongside jihadists battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. Secretly, he also was also training some of those jihadists, including a crew led by a guy named Osama bin Laden. Mohamed later pleaded guilty to providing information that helped bin Laden orchestrate the 1998 terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Picking your own side in a war that’s happening today can put you on the wrong side of a war America ends up fighting tomorrow.

[MUSIC BRIEFLY INTENSIFIES]

And if you’re an American citizen, picking your own side in a war can — in some cases — also be illegal. There’s a law, called the Neutrality Act of 1794, which says Americans are not supposed to join in overseas conflicts where the United States is not officially a belligerent.

Malcolm Nance: [NANCE LAUGHS] There's not a person on this planet outside of, you know, someone from academia that, you know, or some obscure guy at State Department that will remember the Neutrality Act of 1794. So, I didn't sign a contract until I was in Ukraine proper. I was asked about this before. I know people at State Department. The rules are actually very simple. American citizens are not prohibited from fighting in foreign armies. They just cannot be recruited on American soil.

Whatever the criticisms, Nance says that foreign fighters joining in causes outside of their home country will continue to have a role in the wars of today and tomorrow — because of the roles that they've played in the wars of the past.

Malcolm Nance: If we were going to criticize everyone that went overseas to fight in a foreign war, we would not have had a revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette is a good example of that. You know, he came here, brought a ship, brought weapons with him, brought money, and joined Washington's senior staff and became an effective combat commander. Baron von Steuben, an officer in the Prussian army, did come to Valley Forge and create a disciplined force and created the basis of what we call today training and doctrine command.We had an American Civil War where thousands of German immigrants fought for the North. And something that's close and dear to my heart, my grandfather and his brother fought in World War I, and before they arrived, there was an American fighting there by the name of Bullard and he was in the French Foreign Legion, along with hundreds of Americans that joined the French Foreign Legion and fought in Verdun. He was wounded three times, became the first black pilot in American history.

So people who believe in these causes will go and fight. We all wear our American, British, Italian, French patches under our Ukrainian flag patch. The Legion is not going away. We're all one team, one fight.

Nance says that, after fighting in Ukraine for most of a year, he's returned to the U.S. and he put his body armor back in the locker. He says his work for the International Legion now focuses on raising awareness and raising money.

Malcolm Nance: I spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising for the Legion right now.

Peter Bergen: What prompted the decision to come home?

Malcolm Nance: [NANCE SIGHS] I think I'd completed all the missions that I could. I had trained an entire new element of our battalion, I could feel my immunity was wearing off and my mortality was creeping in. And, also, I wanted to do something at a higher level. I'm trying to help our government understand just how critical this battle is. We'll tell our stories later. You know, I'd rather see this war fought and I'd rather see my brothers and sisters come home safe.

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If you are interested in learning more about Malcolm Nance’s work I recommend his book, The Terrorists of Iraq, which is a thorough account of the early years of the insurgency during the Iraq War.

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