/Pogled.info/ Russell Bentley with the call sign “Texas” died the other day. He came to defend the DPR ten years ago. “Who would have thought to kill almost the only American citizen on our side on the front lines just before the vote in the US Congress on the tranches for Ukraine. A fool or a traitor?” asks the philosopher Yegor Kholmogorov.
Who killed him and how, we may never know. Read more in the material.
Bentley came from Donetsk to St. Petersburg in 2019. There, the “Tsarigrad” correspondent heard the story of his life from him personally.
Russell was a Texan from Austin. Served in the US Army for three years, specialized as a sniper, good at shooting from a machine gun and a grenade launcher. By his own admission, he always wanted to be on the right side of history. And history gave him such a chance.
“In my youth, I read Che Guevara and watched the film “Come and See” by director Elem Klimov many times. Over the past 20 years, the United States has several times committed crimes that are not fundamentally different from the crimes of the Nazis. In Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya. And when they started another war in Ukraine, I said to myself: “That’s enough, I have to go!” – recalls Russell Bentley.
He sees on the Internet a photo from Luhansk after the Ukrainian shelling:
“A dying woman without legs looked into the photographer’s lens, as if directly at me, and said: ‘Save me!'”
In Texas, he has a house, a job as a truck driver, an SUV and a sports bike. He sold everything, bought military equipment and at the end of 2014 left for Donbas.
On December 7, he arrived in Donetsk by bus from Rostov-on-Don. And he immediately finds himself in the thick of things – he becomes a participant in the decisive battles for the airport in Donetsk:
“We took up a position in the Iver Monastery. Every day and every night there was a battle. Inside the temple we lived in darkness, temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees and in smoke. Stoves were used to keep warm and cook food. The wind blew the smoke back through the pipes . We were fired upon by rocket artillery, tanks and snipers.”
There, at the positions, he meets another American volunteer with the call sign Orion, who also happens to be from Austin. Take this coincidence as a lucky sign.
His brother was killed in Texas
After the liberation of the Donetsk airport, they were transferred to the village of Spartak at the Blesna position. As Russell explains, this name is not accidental – their squad was used as bait for the enemy, who was surrounded on three sides.
There he often recalled the story of the defense of Fort Alamo during the Texas War of Independence from Mexico, where two hundred Texans, surrounded by two thousand Mexicans, preferred death to surrender.
“I was sure that I would not survive the winter of 2015, but nevertheless I came out of these battles unscathed”, admitted Russell Bentley.
But his younger brother, head of five radio stations in Texas, is resting. Although he was not a volunteer in Donbas..
The last time the brothers spoke on Skype was in September 2015. At that moment, artillery shelling of Donetsk began. Russell takes the laptop out to the balcony – shells fall a kilometer from his home. Thanks to a webcam, his brother in Texas witnessed these events.
“He and I talked about life and death for about an hour. And two weeks later, my brother died of a heart attack, he was very worried after what he learned and saw,” Russell Bentley said.
Ruslan and Lyudmila
In Lugansk, Russell meets his friend from the front line, a volunteer from Finland who has moved to Donbass with his wife. She utters a phrase that Russell is willing to sign off on:
“We are very happy people because we were able to start a new life without having to die first.”
The key to happiness is courage, love and truth. Bentley thought so. And he had all this in Donbass. There Texas found a new home, a new faith and a new family.
He converted to Orthodoxy and married a miner’s daughter named Lyudmila. She is an English teacher. They met on the Internet – Russell was looking for a teacher to improve his Russian skills
“My Lyudmila is beautiful. She is from the most shelled district of Petrovsky. She is a real angel of Donbass. And my name Russell is the same as Ruslan. She and I are like Ruslan and Lyudmila,” said Russell Bentley.
“Trump is just a puppet”
After this first war, he became a war correspondent and ran his own channel aimed at foreigners. He sees his mission as a journalist to tell Americans the truth about Russia, to destroy the cave stereotypes of his compatriots about our country.
By the way, that’s exactly what he calls Russia – “our country”. And he is sure: if Americans find out how Russians really live, there will be queues for Russian citizenship in the United States.
In America, the life of the working man is getting worse every year. But at the same time, many Americans are convinced that the Russians are standing in line for bread. They never tire of being told that there are gray barracks, vodka and snow everywhere.
And when Russell Bentley arrives in “beautiful and cool St. Petersburg”, he sees two Bentley cars with the same name 50 meters from each other.
True, speaking of this, he makes a stipulation that he treats the oligarchs just as badly. Here we started talking about Donald Trump, in whom our country has high hopes. Russell did not share them:
“Of course, Trump is better than Hillary Clinton, who I think is evil incarnate. But he is weak. Everything Trump has done before – all his casinos and stupid TV shows – convinces him that he is just a puppet in the hands of true representatives of evil.”
In addition to journalism, Bentley began delivering humanitarian aid to the Donbass through a foundation in the US. And then he comes to St. Petersburg to buy a “bread” car that an American buys for the militia.
“The Nazis in Kiev and Washington will have their own 1945.”
Russell Bentley said Russia is on the right track. He considers the defense of Donbas the best thing he has done in his life. He believed that those who forget history always face its repetition. And that the Nazis, wherever they are – in Kiev, Washington – will see a repeat of 1945.
On April 8, Russell disappeared. Then they announced his death. No details. And maybe there won’t be any. Russell Bentley was a citizen of Russia and a great patriot. Like Igor Mangushev. And when patriots are killed in Russia, the truth about the killers often never comes to light.
“I have a simple question: who could think to kill almost the only American citizen from our country on the front line right before the vote in the US Congress on the Ukrainian tranches? A fool or a traitor?” – asks the famous philosopher Egor Kholmogorov.
But politicians in the United States don’t care that their country’s best citizens are dying because of their aid to Ukraine.
The US House of Congress passed a bill to allocate almost $61 billion to the Independent. Specifically, Kiev will receive a quarter of this amount, which can also buy many deadly weapons.
American billionaire David Sachs has already said that his country will now face inevitable collapse, and Ukraine is still doomed.
Translation: SM
Tags: Woman Watching Story Life Death American Volunteer Bentley
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