Russell "Texas" Bentley: A Dead American Propagandist in Donetsk

From viral video fame to his ultimate fate in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

Some of you may remember that within a few days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 there was a video that went viral. It shows a man standing near a fleet of Russian tanks and trucks with the letter Z spray painted on them. The man spoke English with a Texan accent as he was enthusiastically talking about how the Russian troops were going to take on those Ukrainian Nazis.

It turned out that the man in that video was known as Russell Bonner Bentley III but the locals in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine nicknamed him Texas after the US state where he came from. He was born in 1960 into a wealthy family. At the age of 12 he came across a book of the writings of Che Guevara that impressed him so much that he started to drift towards communism. He dropped out of high school and worked in a factory before he joined the US Army, where he became an engineer stationed in Germany. After he was discharged he did a series of odd jobs then became a marijuana legalization activist in Minnesota and Alaska. He was then accused of drug trafficking and, at one point, he was on the lam from US Marshals before landing in prison for felony marijuana trafficking. He even moved to Minnesota where he ran for the US Senate but he lost. He moved back to Texas where he worked as an arborist in Austin only to see his wages decline in the wake of the Great Recession.

When Bentley learned about the Russian annexation of Crimea followed by Russia supporting the separatist movements in the Donbass region in 2014, he bought the official Russian position that Ukraine is full of Nazis and the government is backed by the United States. He imagined the struggle as something similar to the Spanish Civil War so he decided to move to the Donbass region, where he landed in Donetsk, the capital of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

He arrived in December, 2014 and joined the Vostok Battalion, which accepted foreign fighters. That lasted until June, 2015 when his age interfered with his ability to fight. He switched to propaganda work where he posted videos on Facebook and got his own short-lived radio show on Donetsk's Radio Kometa. He later started his own YouTube channel. He made frequent appearances on the streaming radio show of Jeff Rense, a Holocaust denier who hosts shows on his network for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, and Don Black, the founder of the neo-Nazi site Stormfront. (There's a certain irony in going to Donbass to fight Nazis yet appear on a streaming radio show hosted by a pro-Nazi.) In time he became a local Donetsk celebrity where everyone called him Texas.

He also did interviews with Western media outlets like Texas Monthly and Vice News.

He eventually gained a DPR passport, converted to Orthodox Christianity, and he married a local Donetsk woman named Lyudmila. He also gained Russian citizenship. When he appeared in that video that went viral in early 2022, he was profiled in more Western publications like Newsweek and Rolling Stone.

After his video went viral he lost his YouTube channel and he seemed to fade from the Western media. He went on to work for the Russian state media outlet Sputnik. He was also accused of making pro-Russian propaganda where he allegedly participated in forced interviews with Western fighters for Ukraine who had been captured, tortured, and imprisoned. Here are just two of the accusations made by the former prisoners.

Bentley was last seen in Donetsk on April 8 after an attack on the city by Kyiv forces. He and his wife were in an administrative office when they saw a huge column of smoke after a strike. Bentley ran in the direction of the smoke in an effort to help the locals. His wife lost communication with him and attempted to search for him but was unsuccessful.

Now there are posts on Twitter/X indicating that his body was found and he had been beheaded.

As of this writing there have been no official confirmation of this but he has gone missing for four days. Some people say that Ukraine is responsible while others blame Russia. Regardless of who is responsible, the fact remains that the longer the 63-year-old Bentley stays missing, the less likely that he is still alive, especially in a war zone.

He had indicated in interviews that he intended to spend the rest of his life in Donetsk. It looks like he got his wish.

UPDATE (April 13, 2024): It looks like there has been confirmation that Russell “Texas” Bentley is no more. According to this tweet by Cossack Gundi, who has been monitoring Russian media reports, he was found on the outskirts of Gorlovka. The Russian media has hinted that he committed suicide even though he was shot in the head eight times. Yet there was a suicide note, which adds to the mystery.

The earlier reports of his being beheaded weren't too far off the mark considering that he was shot eight times in the head. While it's possible that Ukraine might have been behind this, there are other suspects as well, such as Russia. Since the war began in 2022 a number of Russian oligarchs who were previously loyal to Vladimir Putin have been found dead under mysterious circumstances. (There's even a Wikipedia page devoted to this phenomenon.)

In addition, according to this tweet, the two breakaway republics in the Donbass region are apparently dominated by gangsters and thugs. It's probable that Bentley was murdered by them because they wanted a pack of cigarettes or the cash in his wallet.

In any case, Russell “Texas” Bentley is now deceased.

My blog is free to subscribe but if you want to make a comment, you’ll need to take out a paid subscription. Click on the button below for more details.