David Bramlette is a former US Army Ranger and Green Beret who commanded a team in Ukraine’s Foreign Legion for 10 months last year. He currently works for the Romulus T. Weatherman Foundation, an NGO that leads operations in Ukraine to identify, recover, and repatriate Americans killed in action.
In an interview from Kyiv recently with RFE/RL Georgian Service’s Vazha Tavberidze, Bramlette says the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a classic case of “good versus evil,” gives high marks to the Ukrainian military but isn’t impressed with their Russian counterparts, and chides the West for overrating Russian forces. Bramlette also says he likes the chances of the Ukrainian military as it now begins a long-anticipated counteroffensive, explaining that Ukraine’s fighting capabilities are on an upward trajectory while Russia’s military is heading in the opposite direction.
As an army ranger, you fought in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And then you came back to fight for Ukraine. So why do you think this war is your war?
First off, I think this is probably the most righteous war of my generation, this is good versus evil. I was sitting in grad school at Johns Hopkins in my last semester, and we were talking about whether Russia would invade conventionally. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t think they were going to do it. I didn’t think they could be that dumb. I served in a Ranger Regiment and the 10th Special Forces Group, where our motto is De Oppreso Liber, which stands for “to free the oppressed.” What a Green Beret does is to enable a partner force to resist an invasion or to overthrow a corrupt authoritarian government. And when this kicked off, I was like – I have the knowledge, I have the skills, I have the ability to help. I took a leave of absence from school and came on over. And it’s a totally different war than anything I’ve experienced before. My worst day in Iraq or Afghanistan, the worst possible day, when we felt like things were totally out of control – that doesn’t even compare to a normal day here. I think there’s a lot of lessons that need to be learned.
What are those lessons?
Green Berets, especially special operations leaders, need to become very, very comfortable with being uncomfortable and not having communications with the guys who are out in the field. From March until October, when I would send a four-man reconnaissance element out, I wouldn’t know that they were okay until they came back.
So you need to rely on your men’s decision-making on basically every level.
Yeah. The American military has had a very hard time empowering Junior NCOs and even junior officers. They need to learn to trust their guys. And part of that comes from focusing on the basics, basic soldiering. I went down to Fort Bragg and talked to the officers going through the Green Beret course. And the things I harped on the most was basics, basics, basics. I asked all of them, when’s the last time any of you went out in the woods and dug a fighting position? None of them raised their hands. They’d never done it. When was the last time you went out in the woods and had a battle drill? Years ago, if they went through Ranger School. So, those are some of the lessons. I think there are a lot of hang-ups from the global war on terror, where everybody wants to be a cool guy, seek up close quarters battle, because it’s fun and it’s cool. But you’re not going to do that out here [in Ukraine]. I mean, if you go into a building, when there’s artillery and tanks around, you’re pretty likely to get blown out. And there are a lot of really hard lessons – Ukrainians have learned those lessons now.
Ukrainians have learned those lessons through sheer practice. When I interview Western commanders, one line I hear repeated is that Ukraine today has one of the most powerful, well-trained and effective armies in the world. Considering you fought alongside them for 10 months, what do you think?
I wouldn’t say that’s a fair assessment. That sounds like a talking point that somebody wrote up and they’re repeating. It’s more complicated than that. You have professional Ukrainian army units, who have been working together since 2015, served out in the Donbass together, and then you have units that are new brigades that are newly formed and full of volunteers. And so you have a huge discrepancy in the level of experience and training. I stopped combat operations December 1, so I don’t know what result all that Western training that’s been going on has brought, but I can promise you it is huge. It’s something that’s kind of hard to quantify and measure, but I guarantee you, the guys who are doing that training are seeing massive improvements.
How would you rate the effectiveness of the Ukrainian soldiers?
I would say they are pretty damn effective. You don’t have to be super proficient to be effective. Let’s take the example of the Kraken detachment. We worked with them in the spring, at the time, not super proficient, but they were effective. And that’s what matters. I’m sure those guys have become more proficient over time. I would say what makes the Ukrainians so effective on the battlefield is that they’re so motivated. These guys are retaking the towns they grew up in, the homes they grew up in, the place where they had their first kiss.
And how effective were the Russians you fought against for ten months?
I can only talk about my experience, but from what I saw, they were not proficient at all. I think we in the West still overestimate the capabilities of the Russian military. Look at trajectory of the Russian military- it’s either flat, or it’s going down, because they’re taking so many casualties. So in a Russian unit, you have to have a lot of line units, line battalions, and then you have a training battalion essentially, who are like the CADRE- they’re the most experienced guys and they are the ones being sent to the front and sent to the meat grinder. So not only have you lost your most experienced fighting units, you’ve also lost the people who are supposed to be training the fighting units. And so the trajectory is down and Ukrainian trajectory is shooting up. And soon they’ll be getting F-16s.
You were there when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive last year. What do you expect the current one to achieve?
I’m bullish on Ukraine, obviously. I think Ukraine will each achieve a lot. I’m not going to speculate on where they’re going to do their counteroffensive, or how they’re going to do it. But from what I’ve seen of the Russians, and from what I’ve seen of the Ukrainians, I think it’s going to go really well. And when I was talking about trajectories, I think Russia is flat or getting worse, and if they’re getting worse, then it’s in Ukraine’s interest to wait until the perfect moment to attack. That shows a high degree of professionalism. I think the general staff, Zaluzhny and so on, are pretty good at what they do.
What do you think Ukraine needs to make this counteroffensive a success?
We’ve not given them enough tanks to accomplish the mission. I think what the US has been banking on is that Ukraine can do more with less. And we have this combined arms ideology that, you know, if you can effectively use tanks, artillery, air support, infantry support, and use them all together, you have a synergistic effect. And that’s all well and good, but you have to keep in mind that the Ukrainian military has gone from 196,000 people in uniform pre February 24, 2022, to 700,000 people in uniform today. And that’s not counting all the guys who are in reserve. And if we look at the number of Ukrainians who have been trained by Western militaries, it needs to be way more. So I would say tanks and artillery are the biggest things and long range missiles and props to the Brits for taking the lead on that. France needs to step up to the plate and deliver those missiles as soon as possible. And then there is the TAURUS missile from Germany. Prior to HIMARS showing up last year, we were taking artillery and mortar fire all the time. HIMARS started showing up and over the course of that month, I would say we noticed a 50% decrease in the amount of artillery being fired at us because the Russian supply depots were getting blown out. And so when you introduce a longer range missile, you’re pushing those supply hubs back and you’re increasing the survivability of the Ukrainian units, especially the newly formed brigades, who don’t have a ton of training. And whatever we can do to increase the survivability of those guys, I think it’s going to end this war way quicker.
In your first answer, you said “this is the most righteous war I have ever fought”. You’ve fought in two other wars, why do you think of them being in some way less righteous?
Yeah, Iraq and Afghanistan, I have sort of bittersweet or mixed feelings about them because they were also some of the best times in my life. But, you know, I didn’t agree with the way we went about those wars, especially Afghanistan. I was a Green Beret, that would have been a perfect operation with purely Green Berets, with just close air support. When you start introducing conventional armed military forces, the US Army, Marines, or you take a kid who’s 18 years old, and you put a rifle in his and send him through basic training, and then expect him to go and do counterinsurgency- He doesn’t have the maturity to handle it, so that’s why I have mixed feelings about it. You know, I’m very passionate about freeing the oppressed. And that’s what the Green Berets do. And I think it would have been a prime opportunity for the Green Berets to take control. And Iraq, well, the fact I don’t have a good answer for you should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about it. And compared to Ukraine, Ukraine is a European country that has a democratically elected government. I’m sitting in Kyiv right now, and it’s like being in New York City or Washington DC or just a regular American city, and it’s righteous, because when Russia invaded, it felt like, August, September 1939, like if we don’t stop this thing here, it could get way worse, because if you look at it in hindsight, if you look at the trajectory of what Russia has done since the fall of the Soviet Union, with Transnistria, Chechnya, Georgia, 2014s Crimea and Donbas, the dawning of the MH 17. You have all the polonium and novichok poisonings, you have Czech ammo depots blowing up like they’re out of control. And I compare them to a rabid dog. And if you look at that trajectory – if we don’t stop them here, the next stop on that trajectory is a NATO country.
Bramlette requests that if readers know of any KIA or WIA Americans, please contact him on Twitter. http://weathermanfoundation.org https://twitter.com/bambambase
Interview by Vazha Tavberidze
