What happened to the American Russell Bentley from Texas that was fighting for the pro-Russian commies?

Back then, I did not carry a pistol or grenade for protection but I did carry a Ker - shaw Whirlwind assisted opening knife which opened as fast as a switchblade and came from the factory as sharp as a scalpel, and I do mean sharp. Not razor sharp, laser sharp, guaranteed to cut anything that so much as touched the cutting edge. And when I pulled it and flipped it open, prepared to operate on one of the Sparta soldiers, Eva stepped in between us, and somehow touched the blade. Instantly, her blood flowed.

This is a completely plausible explanation. There is a lot of Ukrainian spetsnaz and partisan activity in Donbass, and Americans stick out like a sore thumb. Ukrainians and their allies in Eastern Europe also have a special hatred for us. I think they actually hate us more than Russians. Slava Ukrainii trolls on social media frequently tell me how much they would like to kill me, so yeah I get the idea. In the absence of more evidence, this is the most likely cause of what happened to him.

Like many of the international volunteers who joined the fight in 2014, Russell eventually married a Russian woman, an English teacher named Lyudmila, and settled down with her. In 2018 he published a book about his war experiences titled The Donbass Cowboy. He also started work as a journalist for Sputnik.

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Just the fact that Russia was up until April 2022 perfectly fine with letting Ukraine keep Donbass is a bit telling. Declaring Donetsk a part of Russia didn’t magically eliminate the corruption and violence overnight. Nobody in “Putin’s ruSSian expansionist government” was in a hurry to take on the expensive and exhausting project of cleaning up former regions of the Ukraine. They only ended up doing it because they got painted into a corner. The separatists wanted to be a part of Russia and Russia wanted Donbass to be a part of Ukraine, but in the end the tail wagged the dog to an extent and the separatists got their way. Keep this in mind next time someone on the internet whines about Russia seizing pieces of Ukraine. This only happened because of Ukrainian stupidity in throwing away the April 2022 peace deal, and the NATO pressure on them to do this.

As for why a person of Russian persuasion would want to harm Russell, well, I have to be honest. He was a stereotypical Texan who had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way. It did not help that he barely spoke a word of Russian. Nothing bad, that’s just the way he was. Here’s an incident he described in his book (for context, Eva was a young lady he was spending time with):

Now a couple of weeks later, I think I have all the facts I’m ever going to have.

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There was one particular story started by a Facebook account that supposedly belong to his wife claiming that he had been arrested by members of the 5th Tank Battalion. The Facebook account in question did not respond to my inquiries so I consider this claim as of now to be unverified. However, I would not rule out foul play on that side of the aisle. This isn’t Moscow, it’s Donetsk, a war zone, and bad things happen in a war zone, especially to foreigners. And let’s be real here. The Russian government’s grip on the region is a bit tenuous. That place known as “the Ukraine” is a corrupt hole, and Donbass was up until very recently a part of the mess.

I’ve spoken about Russell Bentley’s mishap and death before on the podcast, but never written about it. However, I haven’t been idle. When I first heard of his disappearance on April 10, I started making some inquiries with my contacts.

Club Banana is one of the top clubs in Donetsk, city center, right off Artem Blvd, right across from the Donbass Palace Hotel. Since the beginning of the war, it was the soldier bar. 90% of the clients were soldiers, and 90% of the soldiers were Sparta Battalion. I had been there once before with Christian and Maria, during my sick leave, and liked the first class bar, excellent food and the portrait of Che that was prominently displayed, just like at the Cuba restaurant. Alfonzo, Eva and I got a table and enjoyed some more drinks, but that’s where things start getting a bit fuzzy.

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I will tell you from second-hand knowledge that more Americans died in Afghanistan and Iraq from “foul play” than the Pentagon will ever officially admit. There’s the story of Pat Tillman being killed by his own team and then his personal letters burned to cover it up, but that only became a scandal because Tillman was a famous football player. If he was just a nobody from the cornfields of Iowa or a trailer park in Georgia, no one would have ever found or even cared what happened to him. In war it’s just too easy to arrange for someone you don’t like to “die” and when there are people dying every day authorities just won’t have the mental bandwidth to particularly care about the death of one guy.

However we have to be fair and consider that someone on the pro-Russian side did something to him, and this is exactly what pro-Ukrainian propaganda outlets claimed shortly after his disappearance, along with a lot of vile fantasies about what they thought (or wished) was done to him.

The exact events surrounding Russell’s disappearance and death are a little murky, but it went down something like this. On April 8 there was a Ukrainian shelling in Donetsk, and Russell left his wife and went toward the noise to see if he could help. He never returned. On April 18, Margarita Simonyan stated on Telegram that he had been killed, though didn’t elaborate much further than that. On the same day I received the following messages from one of my friends in Donetsk:

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

Ultimately, let this just be a lesson on the hazards of going to an active combat zone. Stay out of Donbass and Ukraine unless you really know what you are doing, and be prepared to accept the risks that come with it.

In fact, the only idea I have about what happened next is based on where I woke up the next day and some fragments related by Eva and Alfonzo. Club Banana was the bar of Sparta Battalion, led by the legendary Motorola, the battalion whose HQ was the old SBU, where I had applied to enlist, and been shined on, back in December.

Our unit, Sut Vremeny, was a serious frontline unit, real combat troops, and Alfonzo and I had been shot at many times every day for the last two months. But Sparta were assault troops, the guys who six weeks before had attacked and taken the New Terminal from the Ukrop “Cyborgs” and killed all the ones who didn’t run away. We were tough, but they were tougher, and Club Banana was their bar. And, somehow, something happened.

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I think one potential problem in American-Russian relations is that Russians are more tolerant and long-suffering than us, so an American might not realize how annoyed the Russian is getting until certain red lines are crossed and it’s too late. Such cultural differences can be further aggravated by the language barrier. This applies equally well to Ukrainians who, let’s be honest, are just Russians.

Though I had never met Russell in person, I have corresponded with him in person and he forwarded a copy of his book for my thoughts on. So I was deeply concerned about his disappearance, but I didn’t cause a stink. While he was missing and before the death confirmation, I believed it was best to not make too much noise, as widespread publicity wouldn’t necessarily help him if he was in a potential kidnapping/hostage situation.

Compare this with European tourists who come to the USA and get shot while trying to buy drugs. Things happen when you’re in a bad part of town, and a foreigner doesn’t necessarily recognize the warning signs when he’s getting into a bad situation.

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First, a quick rundown on the man himself. Russell Bentley was an American veteran who traveled to Donetsk shortly after the civil war broke out in 2014 and joined the pro-Russian separatists. He saw combat against the “cyborgs,” the infamous Ukrainian neo-nazi militia that spearheaded the invasion of Donbass after the collapse of the state military. Due to his age as well as his skills at English and internet marketing, Russell moved away from combat operations and switched to fund-raising and public awareness efforts.

Overall, I find the Russian authorities’ response to Russell’s death to be unsatisfactory, and I find the response of Russell’s employers to be unsatisfactory. But I especially find the American government’s response unsatisfactory. When an American citizen dies in a foreign country, regardless of his personal viewpoints, the American government has a responsibility to investigate and demand answers, but they did not, and they never do. Americans are killed or disappear all the time and no one in the US government cares unless that person is gay, black, jewish, or one of the other “special” groups, and Russell was none of those things. He wasn’t even transgender.

I don’t know if it was because Alfonzo was Black, or if the Texan recruit was acting a bit too ‘Austintatiously’, but somehow five Sparta soldiers confronted us and I didn’t like it. Things got serious.

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Logically, it would make sense for the USA to diplomatically turn the screws on Russia about what happened to Russell. Russian authorities would have to either admit it was foul play, or they just don’t know about a murder that happened on their own territory. The reality is that the USA just truly does not give a shit about its own people unless the correct lobbying group pushes a button. The Biden regime doesn’t care about Russell dying any more than they cared about Gonzalo Lira dying in a Ukrainian prison.

I do not remember that part, or what came after. Apparently, we went outside and I got what some might say was a well deserved ass-whoopin’. Well deserved or not, an ass-whoopin’ was what I got. I was wakened some time later in Lenin Plaza by two military policemen. I was beaten, but not too badly, and my Kershaw blade and camouflage cowboy hat were gone. To the credit of Sparta Battalion and the DNR in general, I still had my wallet and all my money, despite having been knocked unconscious and laying on the street for some time. Even the cops were merciful. I managed to mumble the address of the Red Cat, and they gave me a ride. I don’t remember crawling into bed, but Eva was gone and Alfonzo gave me a lecture which included his smashing the empty cognac bottle on the floor of my room.