A pro-Kremlin Texan who traveled to Ukraine years ago to fight alongside Russian soldiers in Donbas has not been seen or heard from since Monday.
Russell Bentley went missing in the Russian-controlled region of Donetsk Oblast, according to Reuters, citing Russian online news outlet Mash.
He was not fighting in the current ongoing war.
In 2014, the 64-year-old former pothead, who used “Texas” as his military call-sign, volunteered to fight against Ukrainian forces, leaving behind a yoga instructor girlfriend.
He relied on crowdfunding to finance his trip to Ukraine.
Bentley, a self-proclaimed communist and U.S. Army vet, never returned to the US after earning his Russian citizenship. Instead, he started working as a reporter for the state-owned Sputnik news agency.
As unsubstantiated reports about his remains being recovered from the outskirts of Gorlovka spread across social media Saturday, so, too, did rumors his disappearance was a kidnapping.
Meanwhile, a woman claiming to be his wife, Lyudmila, released a video message, calling for his safe return. She claims he went to help Russian soldiers following a Ukrainian bombardment, and never returned.
She said she went to look for him, only finding his car, baseball cap, glasses, and his phone, which she said was destroyed.
Two years ago, Bentley was profiled in a Rolling Stone article titled “The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Frontline Putin Propagandist.”
For years, Bentley operated a YouTube channel that was banned in 2022. Referring to himself as “The Donbas Cowboy,” he shared his views on the ongoing conflict.
