In its announcement, the Russian Investigative Committee identified the arrested soldiers as Vitaliy Vansjacký, Vladislav Agaltsev, Vladimir Bažin and Andrei Jordanov. According to investigators, three of these men tortured Bentley to death on April 8. Vansjakckij and Agalcev then allegedly blew up the car with Bentley’s body inside and ordered Bažin to hide the remains the next day.
“Depending on the role of each of them, they are accused of obvious group abuse of authority using physical violence and torture, which negligently caused the death of the victim, as well as concealment of a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of the deceased to another place,” the Russian investigators said in the report.
Russia just completed their investigation into the death of Russell Bentley, the American who fled to Russia to fight in Ukraine. They say three Russian soldiers tortured and killed him in April and then placed him in a car and blew it up to try to destroy the evidence. The… pic.twitter.com/Q57nNxiG8j
— Preston Stewart (@prestonstew_) September 20, 2024
A group of soldiers from the Russian 5th Brigade kidnapped Bentley and then tortured him in the Petrovskaja coal mine. The American died when his heart could not withstand the electric shocks, according to the Newsweek website, the Astra Telegram channel wrote about the case earlier.
Bentley, who described himself as a communist, joined the pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014. His combat nickname was “Texas” after his home state, and between 2014 and 2017 he fought in the ranks of the Vostok battalion, based in Donetsk. He also received Russian citizenship in 2021, noted the exile website The Moscow Times.
The investigators did not announce the motive for Bentley’s murder, but his friends speculated, according to the website, that he might have been mistaken for a spy. Bentley’s wife Lyudmila has previously claimed that he was kidnapped by Russian soldiers from a tank battalion.
