A court docket in a Russian-controlled a part of Ukraine sentenced 4 Russian troopers over the dying final 12 months of Russell Bentley, a US citizen who because the “Donbas Cowboy” gained notoriety for becoming a member of Russia-backed forces in jap Ukraine.
The court docket within the Russian-occupied metropolis of Donetsk sentenced two of the troopers, Major Vitaly Vansyatsky and Lieutenant Andrei Iordanov, to 12 years in a penal colony, whereas Sergeant Vladislav Agaltsev acquired an 11-year jail sentence.
A fourth soldier, Vladimir Bazhin, was handed 1 1/2 years for serving to cowl up Bentley’s dying.
The 4 have been discovered responsible of killing Bentley after mistaking him for a US saboteur. Russian authorities stated an investigation confirmed he had been tortured earlier than being killed. His abductors then tried to cowl up the dying by detonating a automotive containing his physique.
Bentley, 64, was a fixture within the low-level Russian incursion in Ukraine relationship again to 2014. Hailing from Texas and calling himself the Donbas Cowboy, Bentley grew to become a preferred determine on Russian propaganda networks for his criticism of the US authorities.
According to investigators, Vansyatsky and Iordanov caught Bentley “making ready to movie the aftermath of a missile strike” on April 8, 2024.
They demanded that Bentley current his paperwork and clarify his cause for being there, to which he launched himself as a reporter, having labored for Russian state-controlled information company Sputnik. Vansyatsky then “reported to the army unit command that he had recognized a saboteur.”
He acquired orders to ship Bentley to the command publish, after which he instructed Iordanov to detain the American.
Bentley was positioned in a automotive, crushed, and tortured, which resulted in his dying.
Vansyatsky and Agaltsev then positioned his physique within the trunk of the automotive and detonated it, in accordance with investigators. The subsequent day, Bazhin and Iordanov went to the positioning of the automotive bombing and burned the stays of the sufferer.
Bentley, whose army name signal was Texas, went lacking in Donetsk in April 2024.
Bentley fought for the Vostok battalion between 2014 and 2017 and obtained Russian citizenship in 2021. He served within the US Army for 3 years — he was honorably discharged — and as soon as ran for election to the US Senate whereas residing in Minnesota.
Margarita Simonyan, Russia’s main pro-Kremlin journalist and editor in chief of the state-controlled broadcaster RT, wrote on X on the time that Bentley died for “our folks” in Donetsk.
