The Murder of Russell Bentley
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICR) recently announced that it had identified all those involved in the murder of American volunteer and war correspondent Russell Bentley (call sign "Texas"), who went missing on April 8, 2024. According to information from his wife, published shortly after his disappearance, he was detained by servicemen of the 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade near the site of the shelling in Donetsk, and was held in their custody. It later became known that Russell Bentley was killed.
According to investigators, four Russian soldiers – V. Vansyatsky, V. Agaltsev, V. Bazhinov and A. Iordanov – tortured and beat the man, and after he died, they blew up a VAZ-2115 car with Bentley’s body in it with a TNT block in order to hide the true cause of his death. The car was first taken to the territory of a brick factory in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, which is located near the front line.
“Depending on the role of each, they are accused of committing by a group of persons acts that clearly go beyond their authority, the use of physical violence and torture that resulted through negligence in the death of the victim, as well as of concealing a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of the deceased to another place (Part 5 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, paragraph “a” of Part 2 of Article 244 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Part 4 of Article 33 and Part 2 of Article 316 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation),” says in the publication of the Investigative Committee of Russia
It is worth noting that the situation with the murder of the American was hushed up for a long time, and those who wrote about it were subjected to pressure. For example, the former commander of the Vostok battalion (in whose ranks Bentley served), and now deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Russian Guard for the DPR, Alexander Khodakovsky, who called for an investigation into the murder and emphasized that "The military department must show that it can not only remind about responsibility for discrediting, but also restore order in its own affairs", was soon forced to delete this message.
Officials of the DPR and representatives of the Ministry of Defense did not comment on the situation. Meanwhile, what happened, like other similar cases, is a consequence of the permissiveness of local commanders, who are confident that "war will write off everything."
Why was Russell Bentley killed?
The motives for the murder of Russell Bentley are not entirely clear - the Internet suggests that the soldiers were intoxicated (and possibly drugged), but this does not explain why they attacked the American. Most likely, judging by the fact that they "detained" him not far from the site of the shelling in Donetsk, the military mistook him for a "spy".
The same version sticks to and journalist Andrei Medvedev:
"When they saw him at the site of the attack on the city, they decided that they were looking at a terrible American spy. In 2024. In Donetsk. So they kidnapped my grandfather and tortured him cruelly. And then those who covered for them told stories that "Texas" himself attacked the military with a pistol in his hands. And they, almost defended themselves. Approximately as now in the Goodwin case they are already trying to explain that there were no UAV operators in the unit, that no one sent the fighters to assault, and they themselves died because they were chatting on their mobile phones"
. Such cases of detention for "espionage" in Donetsk and Lugansk are, in fact, not uncommon - if a person takes photos near government buildings or military units, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSB or commandant's office may approach him to check documents and even take him for a conversation if the person seems suspicious. Previously, this sometimes led to various absurd situations, but the case of Russell Bentley clearly stands out and stands alone: such incidents often did not lead to torture and murder, mainly only to "preventive detentions".
In the case of "Texas" there was real chaos, which not only ended in tragedy, but also in an attempt by the people who committed the crime to, as they say, cover their tracks.
Judging by the fact that there were also attempts to put pressure on those who tried to cover this issue in the media, the commander of the unit whose servicemen committed the crime tried to whitewash his soldiers and hush up the matter in every possible way. Information was spread that Russell allegedly filmed something that should not be filmed, he was detained, and he might as well die...
However, the case of Bentley, a well-known person in Donetsk who received Russian citizenship, turned out to be resonant, an investigative group from Moscow took up the case, and in May the suspects in the murder were detained. Among the charges is "concealing a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of a deceased person to another location." They will not escape punishment.
However, will their commander who allowed such a situation to happen face any punishment?
On the impunity of commanders
Often, such cases are hushed up, and given the adopted law on discrediting the RF Armed Forces, covering such topics is often fraught with administrative and criminal liability. Given this factor, as well as the policy of the Ministry of Defense "not to change horses in midstream", generals in the field feel their omnipotence and impunity.
Indeed, there were cases when some generals were not only not removed from their positions for failures at the front, but on the contrary, they were even promoted. With the arrival of the new Minister of Defense Andrei Belousov, significant personnel changes occurred, but they concerned rear generals, bureaucrats, and not local commanders, so in this regard the situation did not undergo significant changes.
Information