A Russian general whose soldiers have been accused of torturing an American blogger to death for the Kremlin has died in Ukraine, according to reports.
Major General Pavel Klimenko, 47, headed the Fifth Separate Motor Rifle Brigade in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
It is believed he was killed in a missile strike as he rode a motorbike.
He is reported to have run torture camps used on dissenting Russian soldiers and pro-Moscow agents who refuse orders.
One of Klimenko’s sisters confirmed the death in conversation with the Astra news agency with another announcing his death on Telegram.
According to US-funded media outlet Radio Free Europe, he died on Thursday but the manner of Klimenko’s death has not been verified by The Independent.
A former adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister Anton Gerashchenko claimed the Russian general had been hit by a drone at a checkpoint near Krasnohorivka, on the front line in eastern Ukraine, while “moving in a group on motorcycles”.
American national Russell Bentley, 64, known as “the Donbas Cowboy”, supported pro-Moscow separatists and was living in the city of Donetsk.
He was allegedly tortured and killed at the Petrovskaya mine by members of the Fifth Brigade who apparently mistook the blogger for a US spy. His body was blown up in an attempt to destroy the evidence.
Bentley had made a name for himself over the past ten years by travelling through the territories occupied by pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.
Military bloggers on Friday reported that Russian forces were moving closer to capturing a major town on the eastern front in the war in Ukraine as part of their drive westward to capture all of the Donbas region.
Bloggers on both sides reported that Russian forces had entered the village of Sontsivka and were advancing from the northwest on the city of Kurakhove.
Ukrainian authorities made no acknowledgement that the village had fallen into Russian hands, while noting that fighting on the eastern front was heaviest around Kurakhove and Pokrovsk, a major logistics centre to the northwest.
