Former MSNBC foreign policy analyst Malcolm Nance has joined the Ukrainian forces to help them fight the Russian invasion, he revealed on Monday.

       A retired Naval intelligence officer, Mr Nance told Joy Reid on The Reid Out that he joined Ukraine’s international legion about a month ago.

       He said: “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. I am here to help this country fight … what essentially is a war of extermination. This 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.’”

       Mr Nance — who was also the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies — appeared on Reid’s programme on Monday from a “secure location” and revealed that he had joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.

       “That’s the story. They were higher-level people than I am. Most journalists have never seen an actual member or been following freelancers all over the battlefield. I really can’t tell you how diverse a group it really is. It is literally a multinational force of men and women who are here to defend Ukraine.”

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       He added: “I was very touched when I met the first platoon and saw they were here for the right reasons. They were not here just to get guns.”

       An MSNBC spokesperson confirmed that Mr Nance was no longer the foreign policy analyst with the network.

       During his interview, the former analyst, in fact, also made an appeal to president Joe Biden for “heavy weapons.”

       “Russia has one advantage on the battlefield and that is long-range artillery. Let me say something to the president of the United States: Give [Ukraine] counter-battery long-range artillery—multiple rocket launch systems… to out-range the artillery. If you do that, you stop the attacks on civilians because that’s what they’re doing with the artillery,” Mr Nance said.