“Everyone wants me to pick a fight with my cousin”: Nate Vance on war, family politics, and the fight for Ukraine

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On fighting the Russian army: “I think their tactics were just stuck in the 1980s”

When I left Ukraine, which was a few months ago, you could clearly see the degradation of the Russians’ capabilities. The prevalence of armored vehicle use, for example, has significantly dropped. The threat still exists, but it's certainly less than it was in 2022. They're not going to be making massive armored pushes across the European plain. They can't do it — which is bad for Russia because the whole structure of their military was designed around that doctrine.

I think their tactics were just stuck in the 1980s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they never really progressed doctrine-wise, which you could see at the beginning of the conflict. I mean, it was very much a 1980s-style invasion process the way that everything was structured. But technology moves on.

Massive armored forces moving across space only works if the enemy doesn't know what you're cooking up. It especially doesn’t work against modern weapons that can take out armor from relatively safe distances almost with impunity. You’ve got to move all these weapons, and if they're all concentrated in one area, they're too easy to kill.

There was a time at the start of the invasion when the Russian army had this big advance. All their supply lines were stretched pretty thin. They were disorganized. And then the Ukrainians took advantage of that disorganization. They launched a big counterattack when the Russian ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capability was spread too thin to watch everything. But once things kind of stabilized and forces got organized on either side of that line, it got to a point where it was too expensive in terms of materiel and manpower to take any significant piece of ground. So I think that's why we've hit this stalemate portion of the conflict. And at that point you really are waiting for one side to run out of money, people, or equipment first.

On Russia’s economic vulnerability: “Russia and Putin have basically one source of income — it's oil”

In 2022, Ukrainians didn't have a lot of ways to combat the ISR capabilities of the Russians, but I think they have developed ways to counteract it. I don't know if they've developed them at scale enough to eliminate all of it, but they certainly have ways to bring down drones. Still, it starts to get really difficult when you talk about the Mavic drones, because what are you going to shoot them down with? How expensive is that? And then what's the cost exchange ratio of whatever you're using to shoot down a Mavic versus the cost of the Mavic itself? You don't want to get into a negative cost exchange ratio where you're spending $50,000 to shoot down a $3,000 Mavic drone. The Russians would play that game all day and just bleed you dry financially, just making you do that. Yes, the Ukrainian capabilities have increased. But then the Russian use of ISR drones and unmanned aerial vehicles has increased as well. So it's a constant arms race now. You'll see a shift in capabilities by Ukrainians on electronic warfare. And you'll see a technology shift on the side of the drones — for example, most of the FPV drones are moving to fiber optic control instead of radio control, because that radio connection between the drones is always going to be a vulnerability. But then you see it on the other side too.

I'm not an economist, but I know that wars are expensive, and Russia and Putin have basically one source of income — it's oil. And I think the Ukrainians have been doing the correct thing, similar to what the allies did to Germany in World War Two with their strategic bombing campaign. They destroyed their industry. I think the Ukrainians just need to continue to push and beat up the Russian oil industry as much as they can, and sooner or later it becomes not cost effective to continue the war.

I’m an oil guy. I get how that works. If their break even price is $70, that means they're literally spending money to get oil out of the ground right now. But they have to do it because if they stop producing oil, all the people that work in the oil industry will go do something else. And then when they need it again, they won't be able to get it. So they just have to keep producing it and selling it basically at a loss. And that'll bleed them dry.

On Russia’s military vulnerabilities: “If NATO really did get involved, it would be a goddamn bloodbath”

I think if NATO really did get involved in a major way, it would go horribly bad for the Russians. I think it'd be inappropriate for me to speak about any other NATO military, but the U.S. military specifically — it would be a goddamn bloodbath. Politically, you know, we've lost wars, but never militarily, where our military got pushed out of somewhere because we didn't choose to leave. We've lost wars because politicians lost the will to stay or didn't really want to fully commit, but if you took the WWII mindset — when we're sending everything until you quit and surrender, hitting you with everything we possibly have that’s non-nuclear until you decide to unconditionally surrender — it would be horrifying for the Russians. Again, it boils down to that air power. I think that’s the major component difference in volume. If we spend $850 billion a year on a defense budget, we better have more stuff.

It's not just that we can just fly somewhere and drop bombs. It's broken down into a series of different capabilities. The first thing we would do is go in and do what we call SEAD [suppression of enemy air defenses]. We have a bunch of crazy weapons, like we saw with the HARM missiles that were deployed to great success in Ukraine. And those are the old versions of the ones we have now. The ones we have now are way more developed. In the old days, you had to know where the enemy’s radar was and you had to pre-program a GPS coordinate — like Ukrainians had to do — and then you would fly your aircraft into what they call the WEZ, which is the weapons engagement zone. You had to be within an imaginary cube in the sky and then release your weapon, and then it would go track down that target. But now, an F-35, for example, can just fly around with a HARM missile, and as soon as it detects a radar, the missiles are like, ‘do you want me to go kill that?’ And it just flies off and goes and kills it. It’s a major capability difference when you have that ability to kill it in real time — like, right now.

Once you eliminate that radar, you can go in with old legacy non-stealth aircraft and just do whatever you want. They could literally just fly over and loiter over Russian-held territory. And anytime they saw movement, there's a 2000-pound bomb falling out of something to kill it. You don't have to get close to the ground anymore to do close air support. You can do that from high enough that you don't have to worry about MANPADs, because they just can't get that high. So once you establish that kind of air dominance, you're free to do whatever you want.

If you're a Ukrainian infantryman, and you're advancing and some Russian troops start shooting at you, you just get on the radio and hunker down and you're like, “Hey, the bad guys are here.” And sooner or later, some guy at 35,000 feet is going to drop a 500 pounder on their head. It's a major capability. It screws up their logistics. They can't move anything. They can't store anything anywhere. The air power is such a big capability — you can't understate it. It's massive.

The U.S. military has standard operating procedures that are clearly defined — there's a procedure for everything in the U.S. military, and I think that's still being developed and generated in the Ukrainian military. That's not a criticism. It's just that those things can't happen overnight. If you took the U.S. military right now, threw them in a war with Russia, I mean, the fact that all of those systems are already in place, it would be kind of seamless. The only issue is how long would it take us to get our stuff over there, which would be about six months. Historically, that’s usually what it takes.

On the Kremlin’s nuclear bluster: “He'll get drunk and say some shit on Twitter”

I think the Russians have played on the fear of nuclear involvement, which I think is a misplaced fear. I think Putin's a piece of shit human being. I don't like him, obviously, but I also don't think he's suicidal.

They'll throw that word “nuclear” out and they'll have guys like — what's that idiot that used to be the president of Russia? Medvedev. He'll get drunk and say some shit on Twitter. And then the American media is like, “Oh my God, it's World War Three! It's breaking out!”

What the Biden administration was right about was calling out Putin as being the aggressor. And I think they were right to extend support. What they did wrong is the manner in which they gave that support. If you give me an ATACMS missile with a 300 kilometer range, don't tell me what I can and cannot shoot with it, right? Don't do that. What that does for the Russians is it just gives them the ability to kind of prepare for it.

I think in a lot of ways they were using it for political capital, where they would be like, “Oh, we're sending this, and now isn't everybody happy that we're supporting Ukraine?” Even if it's a good thing that they sent it, I'm like, “Just shut your goddamn mouth about it.”

On Trump’s approach to Ukraine: “I was disappointed to see the argument between Zelensky and Trump”

The problem for this current administration is that they ran on a campaign of not getting involved. And I think you're slowly starting to see the rhetoric shift to getting involved. I don't like the way that there appeared to be some kind of friendship between Putin and Trump.

I was disappointed to see the argument between Zelensky and the Trump administration in the Oval Office. When you put that much time and effort into something and you see somebody who is a part of your family involved in what looked like the dissolution of any kind of friendly relationship, it's uncomfortable to see. But looking back on it, it looks like that [negative episode] is over, and if it looks like things are moving in the right direction, I'm certainly not going to argue with anybody or try to prevent them from continuing that directional shift.

I know that's what everybody wants me to do — to pick a fight with my cousin. I just think it's inappropriate to focus on me picking a fight with my cousin when it doesn't benefit anyone, right? It doesn't benefit any of the people that I want to benefit. It doesn't benefit the United States, and me representing kind of a thorn in the side of the current administration and also being associated with Ukraine does not benefit Ukrainians.

I hadn't seen my cousin for several years. So when I walked into the White House, I was like, “Hey, good to see you.” That was in the spring. I didn't go in there to have a meeting with the Vice President about how to solve the Ukrainian problem. I'm not in a position to kind of dictate to the White House how they should do their business. It was more just kind of catching up.

And then, of course, the subject of Ukraine did come up. But I'm not going to discuss specifics, because it would just be rude. It went well. And when I left, I left with a sense that there is an understanding there that would surprise people. Again, I can't really go into specifics about why I feel that way, but I left with more confidence than I did when I walked in the room.

On Ukraine’s future: “Ukrainians should fashion themselves as the Israel of Eastern Europe”

Ukrainians should focus on post-war, because this thing is going to end. I think they should take that investment fund from that deal that they signed with the United States. I think they should fashion themselves almost like an Israel of Eastern Europe — where a huge portion of their industrial complex is technologically based and kind of defense-based. It doesn't necessarily mean building a massive military-industrial complex. But if you have technology and chipsets and things like that that are valuable for military use, then you suddenly become militarily valuable to everybody who wants to continue to have an army: namely, the United States.

The main way NATO can help now is with steady supplies of artillery. I think one thing that can really be of benefit is if the U.S. were to help the Ukrainians with the organizational structure of the military. It's not necessarily tactics. You don't need to teach the Ukrainians the tactics of what works in Ukraine. They know that. But helping achieve that kind of organizational structure and communication systems to the point where if one random troop on the front line sees something that's worth hitting — that's worth taking out — that that information goes to exactly who it's supposed to go to as fast as possible. It’s something that needs to be improved, and it yields incredible benefits.

I think it’s important to assist the Ukrainians in developing an actual military communication structure so that they can transmit data the way they need to. I don't want to get into the Elon Musk debate, but having an outside company kind of control your military's ability to communicate properly is just precarious. It's a precarious position to be in.

An issue for Ukraine right now — and this is something that the Ukrainians may not like to hear, but — they had somebody really high up in their Intel community that turned out to be a double agent for the Russians. Ukraine was on the front lines of the Soviet empire, so it was full of KGB operatives, and when the Soviet Union fell, they didn't go home. That's where they lived, right? That was their home, essentially. It’s still kind of a big problem. When you hear Europeans say, “We're not willing to let Ukraine into NATO,” a lot of Ukrainians get pissed off. But you have to understand that as long as, like, people high up in your intel community are turning out to be FSB agents, the problem with getting rolled into NATO is that now you have access to that ecosystem of communication and classified materials and things like that. So it's going to take a really long time for Ukraine to root out that infiltration of spies. That’s kind of the concern, I think, for NATO countries. It’s like, “Hey, we can't give you the blueprints to an F-35 if it's going to wind up in Moscow.”

On how the West can best help Ukraine: “It's more valuable to train a hundred guys than to go to the front and maybe shoot one or two Russians”

I do think that Ukraine needs improvement in creating a kind of industrial-level, consistent training program for infantrymen. And you know, the U.S. is the Henry Ford assembly line of producing infantrymen, so that those organizational skills can help. In my Ukrainian unit there were guys early on that were soccer hooligans a couple of weeks before. So when you have any kind of training whatsoever, it's beneficial to them. Any piece of information is valuable to those guys. And you can see it in them. So anything you can do that'll give them some kind of valuable skill, whether it's shooting or first aid or whatever it is — it's just extremely valuable for those guys.

It is a better contribution for a random foreign soldier that comes to Ukraine if they have some skill or some ability to train people. It's more valuable to train a hundred guys than to go to the front and maybe shoot one or two Russians. And unless you have some special skill — and if you don't have any military training at all — you're in the way; you're forcing them to take some of their training resources, which are limited and stretched, and apply them to you.

I've heard some people saying that joining the Ukrainian army is more difficult. I honestly think that's a good thing. I don't think you should just let anybody into the military and give them access to weapons. And the other thing is that the FSB is a global enterprise, and they're all over the world, so they may be sending their own people to come join the Ukrainian military. So it's prudent to be cautious about foreigners coming into your country and then wanting access to your military. That's a pretty significant security issue.

On Ukraine’s manpower shortage: “Two weeks is not enough to make an infantryman”

That's a very delicate political issue in Ukraine, obviously, because the mobilization would require the lowering of the mobilization age. I think the Ukrainians do have a recruiting problem. And that recruiting problem is driven by a training issue. I think the training issue will have an impact. You have the conscription age, which is 25, but you can join the army when you're 18 if you choose to. Now, if the training is not up to standards or is not very good, and you have guys that join the military and then they go get whatever training they get and then they go into combat, and the first thing they think when they enter combat is, “I was not prepared for this.”

Those guys are going to call their buddies back home and tell them about it. And there's nothing you can do about that, right? They're going to talk to their families and their friends and their younger brothers, and they're the guys from their village where they grew up. They're going to say that. So if you're a 22 year old and you're thinking about joining the military, it's kind of an equation. It's like, “Man, if the government of Ukraine is not going to prepare me adequately and this war might end in nine months, well, do I join and possibly go get killed because I'm not prepared?”

The difference is if you have really good training and those guys go into combat and they say, “Look, it's bad, but thank God we were well-trained, because it could have been much worse.” That's a different story to be told to that 21 year old back in their village. And that starts to make him more comfortable with maybe joining up.

I do think that it's wise for the Ukrainians to lower that mobilization age. But not just to thrust these younger guys up to the front. If you think you might be able to predict a personnel issue in the future and solve that before it becomes a problem, because the training of those troops takes a long time. Let's say in 2023, if they would have dropped that conscription age down to 23 years old, and they would have had from 2023 until now to train those guys up and get them prepared — so they don't hit the battlefield until they're 25, but by the time they do hit the battlefield, they're extremely well-prepared.

We did get guys in our unit that had maybe like two weeks or no training at all. They just came to the unit and it was our responsibility to train them. And two weeks is not enough to make an infantryman. It just isn't right. In the U.S. military you spend six months before you even get to your unit, and then your unit trains you for probably a year. So that's 18 months.

I know that the Ukrainians have certain time constraints, and obviously their situation is significantly more dire than the current U.S. military situation. But you wouldn't let a combat medic practice medicine without proper training, because it can cost lives, right? It can kill the patient. So why would you let an infantryman go do infantry stuff without proper training? It will cost lives. It's not a hypothetical. If they're improperly prepared, it will cost lives.

There are ways to provide that training without straining the system too much. There are plenty of people available to provide that training: namely, veterans who've been wounded and can no longer fight. That's a perfect example of a pool of labor that could provide this training — guys who can no longer participate in the fight, but still want to contribute to the war effort. And I don't think it's being tapped into as efficiently as it could.