Moscow’s US Propagandist ‘Donbas Cowboy’ Was Killed by Russian Troops

The Russian state news agency TASS reported on Friday that the Main Military Investigative Department of Moscow’s Investigative Committee confirmed that four Russian servicemen have been charged in connection with the kidnap, torture and murder of the American Russell Bentley in April, while he worked for the Spunik propaganda outlet in the Donbas region.

The investigation found that on April 8, Bentley, who was known as the “Donbas Cowboy,” was abducted while filming the aftermath of a Ukrainian artillery strike in Donetsk's Petrovsky District.

 It is alleged that three Russian servicemen Vitaly Vansyatsky, Vladislav Agaltsov and Andrey Iordanov, a tank crew from Moscow’s 5th Zakharchenko Brigade violently kidnapped Bentley, took him to an unidentified location where they interrogated and tortured him which, in the words of the committees indictment involved “actions that clearly went beyond their authority and which through negligence resulted in the death of the victim.”

The charges also say that, in trying to cover up the incident they put the American’s body into a VAZ-2115 / Lada Samara car which they then blew up using TNT blocks.  The next day Vansyatsky ordered another serviceman in his unit, Vladimir Bazhin, to remove and hide Bentley’s remains, which have not been recovered but his car was later found, inside which was a baseball cap, glasses and a broken phone.

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Initial reports said the parents of the 22-year-old suspect live in occupied territories in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region and he was recruited remotely by a Russian intelligence officer in Crimea.

The Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said that the charges had been put to the accused "who “are currently familiarizing themselves with the materials of the criminal case.” Then in due course they will be formally indicted and sent for trial.

Bentley was a self-proclaimed “socialist” who served with the US military in Germany before returning to Texas and then Minnesota where he worked variously as a bartender and lumberjack and even ran as a candidate for the Senate.

He then tried his hand dealing cannabis for which he was sentenced to five years in prison, after which he worked as a landscape gardener.

In 2014, persuaded by Russian propaganda that Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and parts of Donbas was a “war against the Kyiv’s pro-Nazi elements” he moved to Donetsk, where he joined the Vostok battalion and was given the callsign “Texas” and anointed as the “Donbas Cowboy.”

His “legend” says he fought for Russia in battles for the Donetsk airport, the village of Spartak, Avdiivka, and Yasinovataya – although it seems he only served for around six months before being taken on as a “war correspondent” by Sputnik, who were happy to have an American voice spouting the Kremlin’s propaganda.

In the spring of 2015, he married Lyudmila, a Russian language teacher, acquired Russian citizenship, and spent most of the following decade crisscrossing the conflict zone reporting against Ukraine and, according to his wife, helping the wounded and injured.

His death was initially announced by RT’s Margarita Simonyan in mid-April saying that Bentley filmed reports on the war in Ukraine intended for the American audience, while the editor of the publication “Russian Hour” Alexander Korobko, suggested that Bentley’s abduction was because he was mistaken for a spy.