David Bramlette is a former U.S. 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 said 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 likes the chances of the Ukrainian military as it is now beginning 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.
RFE/RL: As an Army Ranger, you fought in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Apparently, that wasn't enough. You came back to fight more, to fight for Ukraine. Why do you think this war is your war?
David Bramlette: First off, I think this is probably the most righteous war that my generation will see. In my mind, this is good versus evil. I was sitting in grad school at Johns Hopkins [University] in my last semester, and we were talking about whether Russia would invade conventionally. And, I'll be honest, I didn't think they're going to do it. I didn't think they could be that dumb, honestly, and they did. I served in Ranger Regiment and Special Forces Group and, you know, 10th Special Forces Group and special forces more generally, our motto is De Oppreso Liber, which stands for: to free the oppressed. So, you know, what a Green Beret does, essentially, is to enable a partner force to resist an invasion or to overthrow a corrupt, authoritarian government, essentially.
The Tavberidze Interviews
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vazha Tavberidze of RFE/RL's Georgian Service has been interviewing diplomats, military experts, and academics who hold a wide spectrum of opinions about the war's course, causes, and effects. To read all of his interviews, click here.
When this kicked off, I was like, I have the knowledge, I have the skills, I have the ability to help. I basically took a leave of absence from school and came on over. 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, doesn't even compare to a normal day here. I think there's a lot of lessons that need to be learned that aren't being learned [by] Western militaries.
RFE/RL: What are some of the major takeaways that need to be learned from this war?
Bramlette: Green Berets, more generally, especially special operations leaders, officers, they need to become very, very comfortable with being uncomfortable and not having communications with the guys who are out in the field. That's because of direction finding, EW (electronic warfare), etc., etc. From March until October [2022], when I would send a four-man reconnaissance element out, I wouldn't know that they were OK until I could pretty much throw a rock and hit them.
RFE/RL: So, you need to rely on decision-making of your men on basically every level.
Bramlette: Yeah. The American military has a very hard time with that. It's become a very difficult issue with empowering junior NCOs (noncommissioned officers) and even junior officers to certain respects. They need to learn to trust their guys. And part of that comes with focusing on the basics of just basic soldiering.
I went down to Fort Bragg (recently renamed Fort Liberty) and talked to the officers going through the Green Beret course. And the things I harped on the most were basics, basics, basics. I asked all of them, "When's the last time any of you dug a fighting position? Went out in the woods and dug a fighting position?" None of them raised their hands. They've never done it. "When was the last time you went out in the woods and did a squad attack?" -- which is a battle drill that is one of those things that should just happen automatically. Years ago, probably if they went through ranger school, if they went through ranger school.
So, those are some of the lessons. I think there are a lot of hang-ups, leftovers from the global war on terror, where everybody wants to be a cool guy, seek up-close quarters battle kind of stuff, 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 up. And there are a lot of really hard lessons. I think Ukrainians have learned those lessons now, but I think at the beginning of the war there were a lot of hard lessons like that they learned.
RFE/RL: Ukrainians have learned those lessons through sheer practice. Every now and then, when I interview Western commanders, one line that I hear is that they say 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?
Bramlette: 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, because, you know, you have professional Ukrainian Army units, who had been working together, serving together since 2015, served out in the Donbas together, and then you have units that are new brigades that are newly formed full of volunteers.
So you have a huge discrepancy in the level of experience and training, essentially. But I stopped combat operations December 1, [2022]. So, I don't have a window in terms of what result all that Western training that's been going has had. I can promise you it is a huge, huge help. And that'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.
RFE/RL: How would you personally rate the effectiveness of the Ukrainian military?
Bramlette: I would say they are pretty damn effective. You don't have to be super proficient to be effective, right? Let's take the Kraken detachment (a Ukrainian special forces unit), for example. We worked with them in the spring, at the time, not super proficient, but they were effective. And that's what matters, you know, and I'm sure those guys have become more proficient over time.
I would say what makes Ukrainians so effective on the battlefield is that they're so motivated. You know, these guys are retaking the towns they grew up in, they're retaking homes that they grew up in, where they had their first kiss. Imagine if you were in their shoes. I think you would be pretty motivated even if it's very dangerous. Their level of acceptable risk is much higher. And it should be, it's appropriate.
RFE/RL: I think it would be unfair if we left out the Russians you fought against for 10 months. How effective are they?
Bramlette: Most of the time we were based out of Kharkiv. And up until the counteroffensive in September [2022] we were mostly facing [fighters from] LPR, DPR (Russia-backed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions) and then the big Russian military unit we were facing was the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, coming out of the Kola Peninsula (where it is based). The 200th, the Russian unit, got really banged up. There's a bunch of public reporting on the unit, but they were basically decimated in the initial days of the invasion and then they continued to be decimated over and over again.
I can only talk about my [own experience], but from what I saw they are not proficient at all. I still think we overestimate the capabilities of the Russian military, especially in the West.
RFE/RL: Even after all this big myth-busting that the Russian Army, in fact, is not the second-most powerful army in the world, we still overestimate the Russians?
Bramlette: Yeah, I think so. Honestly, because if you look at the trajectory of the Russian military, it's either flat, or it's going down, because they're taking so many casualties and they've also decimated all of their cadres who train soldiers. In a Russian unit, you have basically a lot of line units, and then you have a training battalion essentially, who are like the cadre, they're the most experienced guys and those cadre, those experienced guys, have also been sent to the front and sent to the meat grinder.
Not only have you lost your most experienced fighting units, but you've also lost the people who are supposed to be training the fighting units. And so, the trajectory is down and the Ukrainian trajectory is shooting up. I mean, we're seriously talking about F-16 [fighter jets] now, they might get [those] next.
RFE/RL: You were there when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive last year. What do you expect the current one to achieve?
Bramlette: I'm bullish on Ukraine, obviously. I think Ukraine will achieve a lot. I'm not going to speculate on…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….
When I was talking about trajectories, I think Russia is flat or going worse. If they're getting worse, then it's in Ukraine's interest to wait until the perfect moment, even if it's flat. It's in their interest to wait until the perfect moment to attack. I think that shows a high degree of professionalism. The general staff or whoever's doing it, [Valeriy] Zaluzhniy (commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces) and so on, are pretty good at what they do, I think.
RFE/RL: Speaking of Western military assistance, what do you think Ukraine needs to make this counteroffensive a success?
Bramlette: As [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy told Congress, they need more of everything…. We've not given them enough tanks to accomplish the mission. I think what the U.S. has been banking on is that Ukraine can do more with less. We have this combined-arms ideology that, if you can effectively use tanks, artillery, air support, infantry support, and use them all together, you kind of have this synergistic effect, right.
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. That's not counting all the guys who are in reserve. If we look at the number of Ukrainians who have been trained by Western militaries, it needs to be way more. 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. Then there is the TAURUS [air-launched cruise] missile from Germany.
Prior to HIMARS (light multiple-rocket launchers) showing up last year, we were taking artillery and mortar fire all the time and a lot of it in close. HIMARS started showing up, and over the course of that month, I would say, we noticed like a 50 percent decrease in the amount of artillery being fired at us because the Russian supply depots were getting blown out; they were getting targeted.
When you introduce a longer-range missile, you're pushing those supply hubs back and this is important: You're increasing the survivability of the Ukrainian units, especially the newly formed brigades, who don't have a ton of training. You're increasing the survivability of those guys who are right up against the Russian lines.
No masterful stroke from the [Ukrainian] General Staff or Zaluzhniy is going to win this war. It's literally going to be the grunts in the field carrying the AK (Russian-made automatic weapon) and just banging up against trenches, banging up against fortified positions…. I mean, that is the Ukrainian soldier, and that's who is going to win the war. If [we can do] whatever we can do to increase the survivability of those guys, I think it's going to end this war way quicker.
RFE/RL: 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 as less righteous?
Bramlette: Iraq and Afghanistan, I have sort of bittersweet or mixed feelings about, because they were also some of the best times in my life. But, you know, I did not agree with the way we went about those wars. Especially Afghanistan. I was a Green Beret and that [war] would have been a perfect operation for purely Green Berets, with just close air support. When you start introducing conventional armed military forces, the U.S. Army, Marines, whatever, they don't have the…. If you take a kid who's 18 years old and you put a rifle in his hand and send them through basic training, and then expect him to go and do counterinsurgency, he does not have the maturity to handle that. So that's why I have mixed feelings about it.
I'm very passionate about freeing the oppressed. That's what the Green Berets do. I think it would have been a prime opportunity for Green Berets to take control of that. Iraq…the fact that I don't have a good answer for you, this 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, D.C., or just a regular American city, you know. 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, I mean, you have Transdniester (Moldovan pro-Moscow breakaway region), you have Chechnya, you have Georgia, you have 2014's Crimea and Donbas, the dawning of MH17 (the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine). You have all the polonium and Novichok poisonings, you have Czech ammo depots blowing up like they're out of control. I compare them to a rabid dog. If we don't -- if you look at that trajectory -- if we don't stop them here, the next stop on that trajectory is a NATO country.