“I call Ukraine the eastern model in the battle for the defense of democracy and the United States is the western wall,” he reflects. The volume’s cover – an ersatz gallows erected outside the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, with a skull and crossbones flag and Trump flag nearby – makes clear that the existential threat to democracy is not confined to eastern Europe. Nance is also donating $100,000 from the advance for his book to ensure the legionnaires have the equipment they need. In a year, we’ll get what we need if we’re waiting on the Ukrainian army and the US government, but now we need things now, so we just buy them.” “I have wonderful donors who have helped us out greatly and we get what we need because it’s faster than the logistics pipeline. Having given up a five-figure-a-month salary as a pundit on the liberal MSNBC cable news network, he is earning the same wage as other Ukrainian soldiers: $630 a month.

When a head of Ukrainian intelligence informed him, “Vladimir Putin knows your name now,” Nance responded: “Cool!” When Nance’s presence was made public in April, he was told that the Kremlin had denounced him as a mercenary, soldier of fortune and legionnaire enemy number one. It is defending a significant portion of the frontline and has suffered casualties. The international legion is a combat force of three battalions and several hundred personnel. Our little war puppies, our little battle dogs, were panicking – it’s the biggest fireworks you have – but your job is to remain calm. We were trying to get everybody to the bunker. There was a skyscraper nearby and glass was falling everywhere from 10 storeys down. The building shook, the ceiling started to collapse. They didn’t kill any of us but they missed us by a hundred metres. One incident we had at three in the morning – I was tweeting and I guess the Russians didn’t like what I was tweeting – when they hit us with extremely large calibre weapons, long range too, fired from southern Russia into the north-east. He says: “The thing that is hairiest of all is artillery.

Has life on the eastern front been scary? But he is also a 60-year-old grandfather. He is a former navy senior chief petty officer who knew what it was like to be under fire in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nance confidently reels off the names of Ukrainian generals, key battlegrounds and pieces of military hardware. He explains that, having spent the previous month there as a military analyst, he felt compelled to defend democracy and could not stand by as innocent civilians faced slaughter. Nance, a career counter-terrorism intelligence officer and pugnacious media pundit, joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine in March. “I didn’t want to but I found out that live appearances were contractual ,” he says ruefully via Skype from San Francisco, his voice sounding a little croaky.

U.s. backing insurgency