“In occupied Donetsk, a “military court” established by the Russian authorities sentenced four Russian servicemen to different terms of imprisonment for the murder of American-born propagandist Russell Bentley, who died after being beaten and tortured during detention”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
Major Vitaly Vansiatskyi and senior lieutenant Andrii Yordanov each received 12 years in a strict-regime colony, junior sergeant Vladyslav Agaltsev – 11 years in a strict-regime colony, and Volodymyr Bazhyn – one and a half years in a settlement colony.
Vansiatskyi, Yordanov and Agaltsev were found guilty of exceeding official authority, which caused the death of the victim due to carelessness. Yordanov was also accused of escaping from custody. All three are deprived of military ranks. Bazhin was accused of concealing the crime.
According to the investigation, on April 8, 2024, Vansiatskyi and Yordanov saw Bentley “preparing to film the consequences of a missile strike.” They demanded from him to present documents and explain the reason for being there, to which the man introduced himself as a correspondent. Then Vansiatskyi “reported to the command of the military unit about the discovery of the saboteur.”
He received an order to deliver Bentley to the control post, after which he instructed Yordanov to detain the American. He was put in a car, where he was beaten and tortured, as a result of which Russell Bentley died. To hide his death, Vansiatskyi and Agaltsev placed the man’s body in the trunk of a car and blew it up. The next day, Bazhin and Yordanov went to the place where the car was blown up and burned the remains of the victim’s body.
The American edition of Texas Monthly said that Bentley was previously a military engineer and served in Germany. In the United States, Bentley was found guilty of smuggling and selling drugs, for some time he hid from the authorities. In the early 1990s, he tried to run for the US Senate. He came to Ukraine in 2014 and joined the Russian-backed militants. In Donetsk, he got married, converted to Orthodoxy and received Russian citizenship.