Put up or shut up seems to be the motto that former MSNBC national security analyst Malcolm Nance adopted as he geared up with Ukrainians to take the fight to Russia.
“I’m DONE talking,” tweeted the 61-year-old yesterday.
Nance, a Navy veteran specializing in intelligence, went on MSNBC Monday to tell viewers of “The ReidOut” that he joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense last month.
“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,’” Nance said during the show.
“The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, ‘I’m done talking, alright. It’s time to take action here.’”
The International Legion of Territorial Defense was created by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for foreign citizens wanting to join the resistance movement against the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began Feb. 23.
Nance is no longer affiliated with MSNBC in an official capacity, according to The Daily Beast, which reported it had received confirmation from a network spokesperson.
Before joining the cable news network as a national security analyst, he served two decades with Navy intelligence, reaching the rank of senior chief petty officer, with deployments to the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. A field interrogator, Nance took a strong public stance against waterboarding and interrogation tactics utilized by George W. Bush’s administration against purported terrorists.
Nance is also a prolific author, having penned a dozen books, two in particular about Russian President Vladimir Putin: “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election” and “The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.”
“They are destroying infrastructure, and then you find that they go to the cities and they massacre men, women and children. And that is the fundamental reason everyone is here,” Nance said.
“We really have to assist in any way to stop this, so I decided I came here to assist them with the skills that I have myself.”
Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digitial Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.
