Volunteering to fight for Vladimir Putin against Ukraine isn’t a great life decision, as the average new arrival in Ukraine has an average life expectancy just one month. But for Russell Bentley, a Texan who decided to become a Russian citizen, taking up arms against Putin’s enemies seems to have been his dream.
In early 2022, as Russian troops entered Ukraine, Bentley posted a YouTube video promising that he and his new Russian comrades would soon be “bringing the hammer down” on the country. But, in a darkly ironic twist, it seems the hammer ended up being brought down on Bentley himself by the Russian soldiers who tortured him to death.
Known as the ‘Donbas Cowboy’, Bentley vanished in Apr. 2024 in the Petrovsky region of Donetsk, with his wife believing he’d been detained by an unknown Russian military unit. A massive search was launched, but 11 days later, the Vostok Battalion confirmed his death on social media.
Now the truth of what happened has emerged. Russian soldiers Vitaly Vasnyatsky, Vladislav Agaltsev, Vladimir Bazhin, and Andrey Yordanov had come across Bentley at a military repair facility where he was planning to film the aftermath of a Ukrainian attack. He frantically tried to explain that he was on their side, that he was a journalist, and presumably tried to prove he was wholly sympathetic to Putin.
Darwin award nominee?
Russia has ended the investigation into the death of the American convicted drug smuggler that went on to become a Russian terrorist and propagandist, only to be killed by the same people he talked so dearly about, Mr Russel "Donbas Cowboy" Bentley.
— Kvist (@kvistp) September 20, 2024
"The Russian Federation has… pic.twitter.com/5N7n3h3loh
Whatever his pleas were, they fell on deaf ears. The Russian soldiers dragged the 64-year-old to a cave, put a sack over his head, proceeded to brutally beat him, and then tortured him to death. Perhaps belatedly realizing they may have made something of a boo-boo, the soldiers then tossed Bentley’s broken body into a car and blew it up with explosives, hoping the fog of war would obscure their crimes.
Well, they didn’t. Putin’s government was thoroughly embarrassed by this goof as they’re trying to lure foreigners to fight on their side, and this story underlines what can very easily happen if you encounter Russian troops. Earlier this week Vasnyatsky, Agaltsev, Bazhin, and Yordanov were convicted of Russell’s death and sentenced to up to 12 years’ imprisonment.
If there’s a moral to this story, I guess maybe it’s don’t sign up to be a propagandist for a murderous invading army with a hard-won reputation for sadistic war crimes?
