Texas from Donbass

The story of the Russell Texas Bentley, an American who fought for the DPR and killed "his"

The American Russell Bentley arrived in Donbass in December 2014 to take part in the war and "make new friends." He took the callsign Texas and joined the Vostok battalion, but later changed the front to the informational one-he started the YouTube channel (he was subsequently deleted for violation of the rules) and collaborated with the Russian propaganda agency Sputnik. In April 2024, Texas was killed by the Russian military. Especially for the “cold,” journalist Gleb Holod tells the story of a man who fought for the legalization of marijuana, called himself a communist, tried to get into the US Senate and escaped from prison, and eventually ended up in the Russian-Ukrainian war and was killed “his own”.

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On the afternoon of April 8, 2024, the spouses Russell and Lyudmila Bentley came to draw up documents to the administration of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk. At the same time, an explosion was heard nearby. Russell got into the car and, according to Lyudmila, went to find out if there were wounded at the site of the explosions and whether they need help. He left his wife at the administration building, worrying about her because of the ongoing shelling. Soon Russell stopped in touch with his wife.

Later on the same day, Lyudmila went to the place of explosions in the area of ​​the Petrovsky Auto Bell and found her husband’s car there. In the cabin lay his baseball cap, glasses and a broken phone. Since then, Nobody saw Russell Bentley. The appeals of Lyudmila Bentley to the investigating authorities and did not bring results to the President of the Russian Federation.

On April 19, the Z-channels reported the death of an American communist who lived in the Donbass for almost 10 years. Judging by various reports , Texas was killed by military personnel of the 5th Panzer Brigade of the RF Armed Forces. There are still no details or official versions of his death, but pro-government telegram channels, citing a close to the head of the self-proclaimed DPR Denis Pushilin, wrote a source that the American was raped by the drunken military, taking him beyond the NATO spy. After that, they decided that it was no longer possible to let him go. The adviser to the head of Mariupol Petr Andryushchenko also spoke about this.

Bongo

Russell Bonner Bentley III was born in Highland Park-the prestigious area of ​​Dallas, Texas. When he was eight, the family moved to the largest city city, Houston. Since childhood, Russell did not like to obey the authorities. He preferred the reading of the “Bolivian diary” of Che Guevara, whom he considered his ideological inspirer along with the Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Shi Shi Min.

“I realized that the Vietnamese had the right to protect their land from foreign invaders, and understood that the United States made a mistake. I understood that Fidel and Che had the right to overthrow foreign owners who turned Cuba into a casino and a brothel. I am an anti -racist and anti -imperialist. I support people's right to self -defense, ”Bentley said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

In 1976, when he was 16 years old, he threw the school and settled down a welder to his father at the factory. True, the work quickly arranged him, and he threw it. Then his father began to persuade his son to join the army. Russell agreed only in exchange for the Rolex watch and the payment by the father of Squel’s studies in college. In a conversation with the publication of Texas Monthly, Russell called the army a "good adventure." “The army is similar to socialism-all the plus or minus are equal to each other,” he said.

After three years of service as an army engineer, Russell returned to Texas and got a job as a waiter in his father’s cafe on the island of the South Padr, where the Bentley family moved while the son was in the army. At the same time, living on the island, he played the guitar in the local Asbestos Band group.

“He could make you feel the only person in the room. He was very charming and knew how to make people feel important and special regardless of their status, ” recalled his friend Teresa Harrigan in a conversation with Texas Monthly.

He lived on the island of the Saut-Padre until the beginning of the 1990s, after which he left for his girlfriend to the other edge of the country in Minneapolis, where he began to cut trees and trade marijuana. In the same period of his life, Bentley was carried away by political activism - he joined the Grassroots party, the main position of the program of which was the requirement to legalize marijuana in the United States.

In 1990, Russell Bentley took Bongo's party pseudonym and nominated his candidacy for the post of Senator from the state of Minnesota. The glorifying Cannabis Bongo elections lost the elections with a bang, gaining 29820 votes, which slightly exceeded one and a half percent of their total number. Then Paul Wellstone won, a candidate from a democratic party who began as an anti -war activist during protests against the war in Vietnam.

Bentley did not leave attempts to get the state post in the United States and again tried to get out again, this time to the House of Representatives - the lower house of the US Congress, in which representatives of each of the states meet. In these elections, he moved from the state of Minnesot and received a little more than 2% of the vote.

In the mid-1990s, Bentley with activists from missionary organizations Pastors for Peace and Code Pink went to Cuba, where he realized that he was a communist. True, first, at dinner with the woman-captain of the Cuban army, Russell said that he was a socialist. To this, the captain said that she was considering herself a communist. "What is the difference?" - asked Bentley. “A communist is one who is ready to fight for socialism,” the captain answered.

“Then I decided to stop being a rag and call myself a socialist. I am a communist, ”Bentley recalled in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

In a conversation with the Cold, another member of the Grassroots party Arlin Trout says he was well familiar with the resettle of Bentley in those days. He calls him a “man who is difficult to kill,” and asks to send a photograph of Bentley's hands in confirmation of his death.

“I know him perfectly and understand. We convinced the [activist for the legalization of marijuana] Dan Puron to move to the post of president of the United States with me as vice president in 1996-and thus performed a story, ”said Trout, after which he refused to continue the conversation.

Dennis Peron in the elections in 1996 gained 0.01% of votes, but the story really happened: Peron became the co -author of the law allowing the use of medical cannabis in California. Trout and Bentley went to prison for the storage and distribution of marijuana.

Ton of grass

“Standing in front of the federal court with his hands behind his back, Russell Bentley looked gloomily over his shoulder and sent his wife an air kiss. On Friday, Judge Filen B. sent him to five years and three months in prison, ”the newspaper Brownsville Herald reported on August 10, 1996.

The note entitled “The Dragdilee was sentenced to five years in prison” talked about the smuggling scheme of marijuana from Mexico to Seattle, Las Vegas and Livenvort, Kansas. Six accomplices of Bentley - men from different cities and states of America - were previously sentenced to terms of four months to 10 years in prison of the same accusations.

Bentley charged six episodes of marijuana storage with the intention of spreading it and one episode of money laundering. He pleaded guilty to one of the prosecution points, and the court stopped his persecution for the rest. As it became known in court, the Drug Control Department has followed the defendants in the case since 1993. The investigation managed to prove that during the work - from 1991 to 1995 - the turnover of the organization of Bentley exceeded one ton of marijuana. At the trial, the prosecutor said that at the time of the appearance of special forces on the threshold of his house, Bentley was preparing traps with explosives.

“When I started to do this, I had good intentions, but everything got out of control. Nevertheless, I will continue to insist on amendments to the law on marijuana, ”Bentley answered the court question about whether he was going to continue to smoke the grass.

A month after the announcement of the verdict in a letter to his friend Karl (most likely, this is Bentley’s ally on the Grassroots batch, Karl Olsen; he belongs to the site on which the letter is posted) Bentley said that all the persons involved, except for himself, became informants. He was worried that this business was throwing a shadow on the movement for the legalization of marijuana and the Grassroots party, and claimed that his business had nothing to do with them.

“The only“ crime ”for which I have ever had to answer was the storage of marijuana-this is a violation of an unfair and unreasonable law. The same applies to Arline [trauta] and Dennis [Peron]. And you. I am annoyed and outraged by some people who are trying to disgrace people like us. Those who put their lives on the Code for the righteous business. I am not saying that everyone should violate the law on marijuana, but the hypocrites who condemn those of us who have been arrested and spent years of their lives for the possession of a plant, which is the gift from God, are disgusting to me. The issue of the legalization of hemp has three equally important aspects: industrial, medical and human rights, ”Bentley wrote to his friend Karl.

In 1999, Bentli was transferred to the “Halfway House” - this is the name of American rehabilitation centers, where prisoners are sent for reintegration to society. He could go until the end of the year, but failed a drug test. Not wanting to return to jail, Bentley fled through the window, follows the material in Texas Monthly.

Bentley spent the next eight years on the run, using different personality certificates and carrying a gun with him everywhere. In 2007, he quarreled with a neighbor in the district of Snow -Khomish, Washington. The police came to the quarrel and arrested the fugitive. He was sent to the remaining term of the most strict regime, from where he came out in the summer of next year. He remained under administrative supervision until 2012.

Texas - Donbass

In 2014, Bentley lived in Texas again, met with a yoga instructor and worked as a note in the company that was engaged in pruning trees. He sat a lot on Facebook communities dedicated to Vladimir Putin, and actively followed the Euromaidan, whose main events were in February.

In early June, he stumbled upon a video with a woman who suffered from an air strike in Lugansk. Her face was in the blood, and her legs were torn off by an explosion. The video was shot on June 2, 2014, when the building of the Lugansk Regional Administration was subjected to bombardment. The authorities of the self -proclaimed LPR then reported about eight dead. Among them was a woman with a video.

“She seemed to look into my soul. As if I asked what I'm going to do with it. And I decided that I was going to go and kill the Chuvaks who did it, ”Bentley said in several interviews .

He raised money for his trip on the crowdfunding platforms of Goofundme and Indiegogo, despite the ban on these platforms to collect money for goals related to the war.

Subsequently, he used them to establish the sale of his own merchant, and later collected nine thousand dollars already to write a book. At least half of the amount he managed to collect.

“Two weeks later, I will go to Rostov-on-Don on the border of Russia and Ukraine to find out what is happening there. I will stay there as long as possible or until the end of the war. The US government planted in Kyiv calls the inhabitants of Donbass terrorists and claims that Russian troops have invaded east of Ukraine. Residents of Donbass say that they are protected from a neo -Nazi regime committing war crimes against the civilian population. One of the parties is lying. I'm going to look at it with my own eyes and report to you, ”wrote Russell Bentley.

Before leaving, Russell composed a song about the upcoming journey and recorded the video , sitting in his yard. It begins like this:

I'M Going to Novorussia

To be with Those Who Believ

In Dignity and Honor

And Know How to Live Free

Gonna Stand Beside Them

Till the Very End

Gonna Burn My Money

And Make Some New Friends

I'm going to Novorossia,

To be with those who believe

In dignity and honor

And he knows how to live freely

I will be next to them

Until the very end

I burn my money

And I will start new friends

Having accumulated three thousand dollars, Bentley went to a farewell dinner with his family in his aunt's house in Dallas. The family was not enthusiastic about his political views and plans, but not very much in the details of his travels. The next day, his father took Russell from Dallas to Houston. From there, he flew to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Moscow, and from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, from where he went to the DPR.

"Information warrior"

On December 7, 2014, at the border post between the Rostov region and the DPR, the border guard asked Bentley about the purpose of his trip and the contents of the luggage - in the trunk Texas, they were driving camouflage clothes. He explained that he was going to friends, and in his trunk - “Rozhdestvenskiye Podarki”. The border guard smiled knowingly and missed him.

A few weeks later, Russell Bentley joined the separatists from the Vostok battalion and spent six months on the front line as part of the “essence of time” group associated with the same communist organization. The main idea of ​​the ultra -conservative “essence of time” is to create the USSR 2.0. As part of this organization, Russell Bentley and took the call sign to himself.

In Interv , Vice Bentley called the American government fascist and claimed that it represents the interests of not the people, but corporations and oligarchs.

“If I decided to fight the Nazis in America, I would do it alone. People would look at me and thought that I was some kind of psycho, ”Bentley said, answering the journalist’s question about why he decided to fight the Nazis not at home, but in another country.

Bentley, dressed in a camouflage jacket, under which a body armor was visible, and a cowboy hat with a red star attached to it, explained to Vice journalist Simon Ostrovsky, who was not fighting for the army of another country, but for freedom and justice. He immediately added that the Ukrainian Nazis were ruled by American Nazi, Obama is behind Poroshenko, and American oligarchs are behind Obama.

In 2015, 55-year-old Bentley was difficult to fight on the forefront, and he decided to become, as he called himself, a “information warrior”. He began to blog on VKontakte and cooperate with the Russian propaganda agency Sputnik as a stringer. In last year’s interview to this agency, he stated that if he returned to the United States, then only with the Russian army - “for liberation and denazification”.

In 2015, Bentley accepted Orthodoxy, and in 2016 he met his future wife Lyudmila Zakharova, a teacher of English from Donetsk.

“I watched Russell's videos on the Internet, subscribed to him on social networks. Once he posted a video in which the “essence of time” movement passed the things of those killed on January 17, 2015 to the museum. There were children from the patriotic club in the frame, and among them I recognized my student Masha, which I wrote about under the video. He noticed a message in good English. I contacted, asked if I could help with translations, subtitles ... I agreed. Then she began to play Russian with him, ” said Lyudmila Bentley to the Envisor Moscow.

Mariupol lesson

In 2017, Bentley received the citizenship of the DPR, and in 2021-he went for Russian in Rostov-on-Don. Together with his wife, they continued to live in Donetsk. When in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, the couple decided not to leave for the Russian Federation, despite the proposals of evacuation.

In the same year, he began to actively lead his YouTube channel, which later the platform deleted for violation of the rules. He glorified the Russian army and called the Russian soldiers "liberators and denazifiers." One of the video shot in the early days of the war was preserved on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

“These guys will free all the good people in Ukraine, and the bad guys will weave the ass,” Bentley broadcast on the camera, standing against the backdrop of military equipment painted by the literature of Z.

After removing the channel from YouTube, Bentley continued to blog on VKontakte. In the video, shot in April 2022, two years before his death, Texas, standing against the backdrop of Mariupol , destroyed by Russian bombing and shelling, told the audience that the way this city now should become a lesson for the whole world.

“Today, Mariupol is more released than destroyed. But citizens of the whole world should learn the lesson that Mariupol present them. Those who give their rulers to be fascists and start wars should understand that the war will come to their home. People in Mariupol thought that Donetsk would look like that, but in the end Donetsk was standing and looks good, and Mariupol looks like this, ”Bentley nodded to the destroyed buildings behind his back.

At the beginning of the war, Bentley also started a channel in Telegram, which, by the day of his death, gained almost 23 thousand subscribers. There he laid out reports of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, translated into English, and reposted ζ-Venko. Since October 2023, regular criticism of Israel and the USA was added to the spread of the Kremlin narratives in connection with the conflict in Palestine.

"A real American died in Donetsk"

After April 8, 2024 Russell Bentley disappeared, his wife and colleagues recorded an appeal for a week and a half, asking for him to find him. Only 11 days later, on April 19, the head of RT Margarita Simonyan said that "the Russell Bentley, he is Texas, a real American, really from Texas, died in Donetsk." О причинах смерти она не сказала, но о них в тот же день рассказали в Z-каналах.

«Не вижу смысла теперь что-то умалчивать. 8 апреля Расселла задержали на месте обстрела, куда техасец приехал помочь пострадавшим. Задерживали военные, скорее всего, речь о танкистах 5-й бригады. Их смутил, наверное, его акцент, и они порешили, что поймали аж шпиона. И вели себя с ним соответствующе, хотя у него был и паспорт, и военный билет», — написала Z-блогерка Екатерина Лымаренко у себя в канале.

Z-блогер Егор « Тринадцатый » Гузенко и у себя в канале , и в разговоре с «Холодом» возмущается смертью Техаса и надеется, что тех, кто это сделал, найдут.

«Мы с ним познакомились еще в 2015 году на базе батальона “Восток” в Донецке. Максимально простой искренний мужик. Как будто у него русское сердце было. Видимо, что-то снял на телефон, потому что в машине у него этот телефон лежал разбитый пополам. Как будто прикладом ударили. Короче, свои его убили. Я честно до сих пор в ахуе», — говорит Тринадцатый.

Возмутился его смертью и бывший командир батальона «Восток» Александр Ходаковский, под началом которого Бентли воевал.

«Мы очень тщательно оберегаем нашу армию от любой дискредитации. Так тщательно, что даже до стерильности, — забыв напрочь такое понятие, как конструктивная критика, которая вроде бы должна делать мир лучше. Мне кажется, что наши усилия над собой, а порой и вступание в сделку с совестью должны быть вознаграждены примерным наказанием тех, кто убил Рассела Бентли. Военное ведомство должно показать, что оно умеет не только напоминать об ответственности за дискредитацию, но и наводить порядок в своем хозяйстве», — написал Ходаковский, но вскоре удалил пост.

Делом об убийстве Бентли занялось Главное управление Военного следственного комитета. При этом его тело так до сих пор и не вернули жене. В последнем видео Людмила Бентли обратилась напрямую к президенту России, потому что «как только обращаешься к Владимиру Владимировичу Путину — все проблемы решаются».

Сидя в черном платке на фоне разгрузочного жилета своего мужа и флага ДНР, Людмила Бентли сказала, что живет в аду уже две недели и не может похоронить мужа по-христиански.

«Помогите, чтоб мой муж нашелся и чтоб виновные были наказаны. Эта ситуация уже вышла на мировой уровень. Рассел — личность мирового значения. Он вел информационную войну на Запад. Он всегда говорил, что его слова летят дальше, чем пули автомата. Мне оказывается противодействие на негласном уровне. Это больше не может оставаться под ковром. Управьте пожалуйста», — просила Людмила Бентли (на сообщения корреспондента «Холода» она не ответила).

28 апреля в канале Техаса появился пост , из которого следует, что угнанную от автобазы белую «Ниву» Бентли нашли взорванной и сгоревшей на кирпичном заводе в Петровском районе Донецка, почти на линии фронта. Внутри были его останки. Вину за его убийство взял на себя командир 5-й танковой бригады ВС РФ. Реакции от властей на смерть Техаса не последовало.

К 30 апреля никаких официальных подробностей о том, при каких обстоятельствах погиб Рассел Бентли и был ли он изнасилован, так и не появилось.