Renegade Texan’s Wife Claims Her Pro-Kremlin Husband Was Kidnapped by Russian Tank Crewmen

A search for a Texas-born renegade fighting the side of Russia and gone missing or even shot dead in a Donetsk suburb last week took a new twist on Monday with his wife making public claims that soldiers from a Russian army tank unit kidnapped the pro-Kremlin American and were holding him hostage.

Donetsk resident Lyudmila Bentley, or someone claiming to be her, in a Monday post on Bentley’s personal Telegram channel “Russell TEXAS Bentley” said that she had received “reliable and confirmed information...(that is) ironclad and does not raise any doubts” that her husband had been “detained illegally” by Russian army soldiers.

A Dallas native throwing in his lot with pro-Russia forces that took over the eastern Ukrainian city Donetsk and territory around it in 2014, Bentley initially fought as a member of local militia formations and later became a “journalist” working from time to time for the Russian state media platform Sputnik.

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In the 2014-21 period pro-Russia authorities in Donetsk promoted Bentley, as a “Real American,” aligning himself with Russia because Russian government supported the common person’s interests, while US government and its policies had been co-opted by elites and corporations.

Mrs. Bentley said soldiers from Russia’s 5th Brigade “brutally detained” her husband on April 8, between 4:20 p.m. and 5 p.m., as he was running an errand in the Avtobaza area of Donetsk’s Petrovsky district. In an April 13 appeal to authorities to find Bentley, she said he was a solid member of the community who “always has worked to help simple people.”

Pro-Russian information platforms in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the unrecognized independent statelet created by the Kremlin in Donetsk and surrounding territory in 2014, widely reported Bentley’s disappearance and suggested it was foul play.

Russian “war correspondent” Simon Pegov, a pro-Kremlin milblogger frequently operating in the DPR, on Friday called Bentley’s failure to return home “concerning” and called on local authorities to do all possible to find him.

Following a shell or missile strike in the neighborhood Bentley decided to leave his wife, with whom he was shopping, and travel to the site of the explosions to help injured, Pegov reported. Bentley had been carrying a pistol legally as well as identification documents, but his status as a registered militia member and high public profile across Donetsk region failed to prevent two unidentified men from dragging him into a garage, Pegov wrote on April 12.   

Top Moscow propagandist Magarita Simonyan, director of the state-run RT and Sputnik information platforms, in an April 12 statement confirmed Bentley’s disappearance and reported he approached the site of shell or mortar strikes “to see if the wounded need help.” She described him as a DPR militia man “cooperating at times” with Sputnik.

Some English-language reports on “X” – all unconfirmed – said Bentley died in an apparent contract hit. Some suggested he had been shot five times.

A March 2022 Rolling Stone article profile said Russell Bonner Bentley III, 63, was a former pot dealer convicted on drug charges and the high school drop-out “black sheep” from a wealthy Dallas family. He became a citizen of Russia in 2020 and told Rolling Stone the Ukrainian military was “the sum of all evil…genuine, mass-murdering Nazis… (whose ranks are filled with) thousands of ISIS cannibals.”

Bentley traded on his roots in the US’s second-biggest state to promote himself in Donetsk media as man of straight talk and family values.

Russian “war correspondent” Vladimir Sladkov, a leading Moscow mil-blogger on the Russo-Ukraine war, in an April 12 post told his 900,000-plus followers: “Guys, in Donetsk my friend ‘Texas,’ a real defender of Donbas, a warrior and a very good and honest person, has gone missing. I’m worried, I’m checking information and I’m sure that responsible agencies will investigate this tragic event.”

According to the independent Russian news platform Astra, prior to his capture, Bentley took pictures of buildings damaged in the shell or mortar strikes, and that law enforcers responding to the scene later found his baseball cap, reading glasses and smashed smartphone inside his automobile, a white Niva 4WD.

During a brutal Russian army assault using heavy artillery and strategic bombers against the southeastern city Mariupol, Bentley claimed Kremlin forces were applying firepower carefully and attacking only military targets, and that Ukrainian troops defending the city were fascist extremists hiding behind civilians.

“They’re not [hitting civilians in Mariupol.] They’re [Kremlin commanders] going to send in their spetsnaz (special operations infantry) and Chechen special police in there, and they’re going to hunt these rats [Ukrainian forces defending Mariupol] down one by one and give them what they got coming.”   

Shaun Pinner, a British soldier that fought with Ukrainian Marines against Russian forces in southeast Ukraine from 2016-2022, and who was taken prisoner by the Russian army along with fellow Englishman Aiden Aslin during the Mariupol siege – making him one of the “rats” Bentley suggested should be exterminated – in Tuesday comments on the platform “X” said that in his personal view, Bentley was dead and that he got what was coming to him.

“I will not dwell or say I am glad he is dead after this guy launched a personal campaign against Aiden and myself. I really don’t care for him, he was a proven liar and Walter Mitty and on the run hiding in Donetsk under the pretense of supporting Donetsk independence. A real nasty peace [sic] of work. ‘Payback is a stripper named Karma.’ He was a nobody before and he died a nobody!” Aslin said.

Ukraine’s government considers third-nation citizens assisting Russian combat operations and occupation authority activities legitimate military targets, but, Kyiv’s secret operatives since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appear primarily to target Ukrainian nationals collaborating with Russian authorities, or senior Russian officials.

Kyiv Post asked Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, HUR, for comment on Bentley’s disappearance. They had not responded by the time this article was published.