Ukraine war: Nance joined International Legion of Territorial Defense about a month ago.
In the wake of the ongoing Russian invasion, former American TV analyst Malcolm Nance joined the foreign military unit fighting for Ukraine, according to LA Times. Taking to Twitter, Mr Nance posted a photo of himself holding an assault rifle. “I am DONE talking,” he wrote in the caption.
Mr Nance, a Navy veteran and a former national security analyst for MSNBC, also appeared on Monday's episode of Joy Reid's nightly show - “The ReidOut” - on the channel, wearing military fatigues and combat gear. The former naval intelligence officer, who has served as an on-air analyst at the Comcast-owned capable network since 2017, appeared while carrying what appeared to be a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Speaking in the interview, he revealed that he joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense about a month ago to fight the Russian invasion and assist in the survival of Ukraine.
“I spent quite a bit of time here in the pre-war period, and when the invasion happened, I had friends who are in Donetsk, who are in the Ukrainian army, who are writing to us and telling us, ‘We're not gonna survive tonight. We've been hit 500 times,'” said Mr Nance during the televised show.
“The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, I'm done talking. It's time to take action here,” he added.
Further, Mr Nance called the ongoing war “existential”, adding that Russia brought it to the Ukrainian people. He accused Russia of “mass-murdering” civilians. He said that there are people here in Ukraine like him “who are here to do something about it”. Mr Nance stated that the purpose of the international legion is to protect the innocent people of Ukraine from Russian aggression.
“It's not a conventional war, Joy. Even though you have two armed forces going head to head here. You have another group — I won't even refer to the Russians as an army — just using mass heavy weapons that are used in combat against civilians,” he explained.
Mr Nance revealed that Russia is destroying infrastructure, and killing men, women and children. “We really have to assist (the Ukrainians) in any way to stop this, so I decided I came here to assist them with the skills that I have myself,” he added. Speaking during the interview, the former MSNBC analyst also went on to say that Russians are “barely” attacking Ukrainian troops.
“Their emphasis seems to be the mass murder of civilians, which seems to be against all laws of war,” he said, adding, “These are war crimes.”
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It is to mention that according to LA Times, before joining MSNBC, Mr Nance was a career Navy intelligence officer and field interrogator who had been deployed for intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. He reportedly spent years in the Middle East studying Al Qaeda and even went public against waterboarding torture during the former Geroge W. Bush administration in the United States. Mr Nance has written several books, including “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election”.