Posted on 04/20/2024 4:36:21 PM PDT by marcusmaximus
The missing American who’d traveled to Ukraine years ago to aid Russian separatists in Donbas was found dead in the country’s war-torn eastern region.
The body of Russell Bentley, a 64-year-old U.S. Army vet, was recovered in the Russian-controlled region of Donetsk Oblast, Reuters reported.
-snip-
The former pothead, who used “Texas” as his military call-sign, left behind a yoga instructor girlfriend to travel to Ukraine.
He utilized crowdfunding sites to finance his trip, and had since become a Russian citizen.
He also got married after moving to Ukraine, where he began working as a reporter for the state-owned Sputnik news agency.
-snip-
Conflicting reports suggest Bentley was abducted by Russian soldiers and killed, possibly because they thought he was an American spy.
On social media, unsubstantiated claims circulated saying Bentley was raped prior to his murder, and was either shot eight times in the head or decapitated.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The only good commie is a dead commie.
Therefore, Bentley is a good commie.
I noticed 😜
Is that a doink in your pocket or have you been looking at Putin on horseback with his shirt off again?
Marcus wishes it was him and tucker.
Seriously, check his article post history.
You’ll see his jilted lover style threads about Tucker Carlson.
“Pro-Kremlin Texan Russell Bentley, who fought for Russia, found dead in Ukraine”
Good.
Aren’t you going to post twenty threads about it, speedy?
Ukraine ping
A sad example of friendly fire - hazardous to locals, and doubly hazardous to foreigners unaccompanied by local acquaintances who can vouch for them. A Russian blogger laments his loss:
I see no point in holding anything back now. On April 8, Russell was detained at the scene of the shelling, where he came to help the victims. The military detained him, most likely they were tankmen of the 5th brigade. They were probably confused by his accent, and they decided that they had caught a spy. And they behaved with him accordingly, although he had both a passport and a military ID.
Just think what Texas could have thought in the last minutes of his life, who 10 years ago came here at the call of his heart to defend the besieged Donetsk, who had unlimited trust in all people in uniform, and in people in general, his usual expression was: “Bro.”
There’s a lot to be said about Texas. He was an Orthodox Christian, found love in Donetsk and lived with his Lyudmila in Petrovka.A story for a film. In his wallet he had a portrait of his wife right next to his own driver’s license photo, he arranged them in such a way that when the wallet was closed, it appeared that the spouses were kissing...
What was he thinking about when these freaks kicked him? About his wife? Mum?
He loved his mother very much, he told me in an interview that once during heavy shelling he thought: “But if I die now, I will immediately meet my mother.”
I don’t know why we should take Kyiv and Odessa now. War must be waged with clean
hands or not waged at all.
Now only two things can be achieved: punishment of the guilty and an Orthodox funeral for Russell. And a funeral is possible only when the body is given back.
Can we at least achieve this?!]
He quickly made a name for himself in combat. “Texas showed himself to be a good, hardy fighter, and an excellent machine gunner,” a writer for Sut’ Vremeni’s newspaper once noted. In battle, Bentley often wore a straw cowboy hat that he’d adorned with a red Soviet star.
Each evening at the monastery, he entertained his bunkmates by strumming his guitar and singing in pidgin Russian. At night they were careful to walk the hallways in total darkness, lest the beam from a flashlight attract the eye of a Ukrainian sniper. Once, a mortar struck the wall directly outside the room where Bentley was sleeping, sending shrapnel into his sleeping bag. He escaped unscathed.
In the waning days of 2013, Bentley couldn’t shake the feeling that his life was stalling out. Born into a wealthy family, he’d dropped out of high school and worked a factory job before joining the Army. He then bounced around odd jobs and ultimately found his calling as a marijuana activist, although trafficking the drug had eventually turned him into a fugitive. Now he was working as an arborist in Austin, renting a bedroom in a ranch-style house in Round Rock, and searching for a larger purpose. Following the Great Recession, his tree-trimming wages had dropped from $1,000 for five days of work, in 2007, to $700 for six days of work. He watched as his friends struggled as well. “People I know in Texas, Oklahoma, and Washington, they’re all working harder for less money now,” he told me.
He was fast becoming his own worst fear—a middle-aged man with a bloated waistline and no savings. “I have to find something real and meaningful in my life,” he thought, “even if it’s to be like Davy Crockett and end up at the Alamo. I have to express myself by action and not just words.”
For years his media diet had consisted of a vast constellation of Kremlin-friendly fringe websites like Veterans Today and Global Research. (He later became a fan of Southfront, which appears “to be a Russian front that deliberately obscures its origins,” a State Department official told Politico.) The perspectives that he found there, from articles lamenting the shrinking American middle class to posts about the failures of the American justice system, resonated with his own experiences.]
The rumored backstory is that a Chechen HQ in Donestsk was liquidated by a Ukrainian artillery strike.
Buddies of the dead Chechens found Bentley and thought he was a NATO spy so they gang raped him.
Then, they were told that Bentley was on their side but they couldn’t let him live after they had their way with him. So they shot his entire head off.
Have a talk with your Chechens, please.
You are a scumbag
Be mad at Putin’s Chechens, not me.
😂😂
You deserved a zot long ago. Bot.
Bring your personal electrical generators!
Nearly 200,000 city dwellers remain without power, while 50% of the region’s population still suffers from outages, officials say.
###
At CHP-5, a plant in Kharkiv that generates electricity and heat, the acrid stench of smoke still hangs in the air. Its damaged generator and turbine must be replaced, according to plant manager Oleksandr Minkovich.
The plant supplied 50% of the region´s electricity and 35% of the city´s heating, Minkovich said. It has been attacked six times since the Russian invasion began, but the latest barrage destroyed “any possibility” for power generation, he said.
Spare parts for the Soviet-era plant can only be sourced from Russia, and full restoration would likely take years, he said. But Minkovitch hopes Ukraine’s Western partners will provide modern technology to decentralize power in time for winter.
Without this, he said, he’s unsure how to meet demand.
To keep the lights on, power is diverted to Kharkiv from neighboring regions, but this process overloads the grid and causes unscheduled blackouts. Businesses rarely know when, and for how long, they can rely on the grid.
“We wake up every day and have no idea if we will have power or not,” said Oleh Khromov, the owner of a popular Kharkiv restaurant, Protagonist.
Of dozens of former residents, only 10 remain in Faichuk´s apartment block in Lukiantsi.
###
Before the war, 2,000 people lived in the village of Rubizhne, 14 kilometers from the Russian border. Today, only 60 remain, including Olha Bezborodova. But she is uncertain how long she will stay.
“It’s really hard. If we had light it would be easier,” Bezborodova said, cradling her toddler. She said organizations have helped her to fix her home, “but they (the Russians) are not finished, they are bombing all the time.”
Tell the Ukrainians to stop press-ganging little boys.
Seriously. Have a talk with your Chechens. Tell them it’s not a good look.
The NY Post story says the allegations of rape and how he died are unsubstantiated.
Yet you are claiming that he was raped and also making a claim on how he died.
How do you know those things? Do you have a reference for your claims?
Yes. Unsubstantiated. Those are the rumors.
The 2023 spring offensive that will hit sometime in mid July, 2024.
It’s scheduled in between Putin dying for the 10th time and the Ukrainians running out of men for the 11th time.
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