Three Russian soldiers were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on Monday for torturing and killing Russell Bentley, a 63-year-old US national who had volunteered to fight for Russia against Ukraine. Bentley went missing in April 2024 near Russian-controlled Donetsk after his wife said he had gone out in the aftermath of shelling by Ukrainian forces. Investigators said the soldiers beat and tortured him to death, then tried to hide the crime by blowing up his body in a car. A military court in Donetsk gave two soldiers 12-year sentences and a third 11 years. The case embarrassed Moscow – which has lured foreigners to fight on its side – while attracting derision from pro-Ukrainian observers about the treatment westerners could expect if they volunteered to fight for the Kremlin. Russian authorities tried to portray it as a tragic one-off.
Nicknamed the “Donbas Cowboy”, Bentley was featured in a 2022 Rolling Stone article about his transformation from Texas leftist to “pro-Putin propagandist”, and, prior to the 2022 invasion, in Shaun Walker’s 2015 Guardian article about anti-Ukrainian rebels in the Donbas. He had obtained Russian citizenship and had done some work for the Russian state-controlled Sputnik news service. The court heard that the soldiers found Bentley near a military repairs facility preparing to film the aftermath of the Ukrainian attack. They disregarded his explanation that he was a journalist, put a sack over his head, and beat and tortured him to death, it said. A photograph published in some Russian media on Monday showed him sitting on a bed next to an assault rifle, with a pro-Russian flag, a souvenir from Texas and a bust of Vladimir Lenin.
Ukraine is short of about $800m for US weapons that it had planned to buy this year with help from its European allies, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president reiterated that for next year, Ukraine would need about $15bn for the Purl programme, which involves purchases of US weapons with European money.
Eleni Courea, Jennifer Rankin and Peter Beaumont write that EU leaders will meet on 18 and 19 December in an attempt to sign off on a long-awaited European Commission proposal to funnel £78bn into a “reparations loan” that would go to Kyiv next year, funded by frozen Russian funds. In London on Monday, Zelenskyy met with European leaders Keir Starmer of Britain, Emmanuel Macron of France and Friedrich Merz of Germany. They were joined on a call by leaders of seven other European countries, a senior representative from Turkey, and Nato and EU chiefs.
