US volunteer and journalist Russell Bentley killed in Donetsk

Russell Bentley, a volunteer from the United States with call sign Texas, who participated in hostilities in Ukraine since 2014, was killed in Donetsk. The report about his death appeared on the Telegram channel of the Vostok Battalion, where he served from 2014 to 2017.

“Russell Bentley was killed. Perhaps this term is not entirely appropriate for the motives that guided those who killed Russell, but we have to agree that such people and their accomplices make evil trivial,” the battalion said in a statement.

Russell Bentley went missing on April 8 during the shelling of Donetsk began. His wife told RT that Russell left to help victims and could no longer be reached afterwards. Bentley's vehicle was found at the scene of the shelling. A baseball cap, glasses and a broken phone were found in the car. The Ministry of Internal Affairs put the American on the wanted list.

Alexander Korobko, editor-in-chief of the Russian Hour publication where Bentley worked part-time, later said in a video message that the American was detained by “unknown men in military uniforms.” Korobko suggested that the local military may have accidentally mistaken the American for a spy and taken him to interrogators.

Bentley’s wife Lyudmila said that on April 8 her husband was “brutally detained” by “military, tank crews, from the 5th Brigade” in the Avtobaza area in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk.

His body was later found. His wife was informed that a DNA test confirmed a match with Russell Bentley.

64-year-old Russell Bonner Bentley was born in Texas and worked there as a logger for almost all of his life. He then moved to Donetsk, converted to Orthodoxy and joined the DPR militia. The American later left the armed forces due to his age. He married a Russian language teacher, received Russian citizenship and began collaborating with government publications.

When serving in the Vostok battalion, he fought for the Donetsk airport, villages of Spartak, Yasinovataya and Avdeevka.