“. . . seek, and ye shall find . . .” Matthew, 7:7-8.

It’s true. I sought, and I found more information on Russell Bentley, who seems after all to have “turned up dead” eleven days after his disappearance on April 8th. The word is that he was most likely “picked up by soldiers mistaking him for an American or NATO spy.” [DailyMail.com, April 25, 2024.] Although if he’d been embedded with the Vostok Battalion for so long, how could he not have identified himself to them? . . .

At any rate, that just confirms what has already been reported about Russell’s mysterious disappearance. What is even more interesting, though, is what was previously unknown about him, at least to most of the world. His death has precipitated an apparent media storm in Russia, where he is said to have been a “propaganda favorite” of the government, including his most recent stint as a reporter for state-run Sputnik-TV. He was an American turncoat of the sort usually only dreamt of by the Kremlin, dropped right into their laps.

His murder has been depicted as a tragic error, understandably occurring when he was found photographing scenes of destruction in Russia-annexed areas of Ukraine. But was it indeed a mistake? It is now known that he had become involved in ultranationalist circles, “and his death has made him the latest in a number of leaders of the annexation of eastern Ukraine to show up dead . . .” It is still not clear why he really was detained on April 8th, or exactly how he was killed; but “unverified reports said he was kidnapped by ‘unknown people in military uniforms.’” [Id.] There were a few more grisly details, better left unsaid here. But his involvement with the ultranationalist movement, which generally promotes the opinion that Russia is not pursuing the war aggressively enough, immediately brings to mind the fate of the like-minded Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late leader of the Wagner Group, and his attempted revolt against the military. That sort of criticism does not sit well with Vladimir Putin.

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But you may be wondering how a burly, middle-aged Texan wound up in Ukraine, fighting with the Russian military, in the first place. What must the first half-century of his life have been like? Was he poverty-stricken, neglected, abused? Were his parents “closet commies?”

The answers to those questions are: Fine, no, no, no, and no.

In fact, in an interview for a 2022 article in Rolling Stone, he revealed that he had grown up in the very exclusive Dallas, Texas, neighborhood of Highland Park, which he called “the Beverly Hills of Dallas.” He portrayed himself as the “black sheep” of his family, drawn to communist ideas and anti-Vietnam causes. He read, and admired, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. He described himself as “anti-racist” and “anti-imperialist.”

Somewhere along the way, he became a drug dealer. He was convicted of drug trafficking in 1996, sentenced to five years in prison, and somehow escaped after three years, remaining at large until 2007. He was then recaptured and ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

Inexplicably, he had managed in 1990 . . . well before his run-in with the law . . . to become a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota — a state as different from Texas as one could hope to find. His platform largely revolved around the legalization of marijuana; he won only 1.65 percent of the vote.

He was, in the simplest of terms, a born loser.

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Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 may have been the spark that ignited his fervor. He described it thus: “This is the battle, not just of Ukraine. This is the battle between good-and-evil for the future of the world. And right now, it’s looking like the world might just have a chance because us [sic] and our friends are kicking some Nazi ass right now.” [DailyMail.com, id., citing Rolling Stone.]

And in 2022, when Russia once more invaded Ukraine, he announced his support on Russian social media platform VKontakte: “Heading West with the Liberators of Ukraine. We may stop in Kiev, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.” [DailyMail.com, id.]

In reality, he was stopped in Donetsk, Ukraine.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
5/6/24