American volunteer in the DPR: “East of Kyiv everything will be ours”
Donetsk
Which territories of Ukraine will Russia take as a result of the military operation, and which will the West take? Why are there no US volunteers in the DPR army now? How to wage an information war when the main social networks belong to Western companies?
A volunteer from the United States, Russell “Texas” Bentley, who is fighting on the side of the DPR, told a PolitNavigator correspondent about this and much more.
Russell, besides you and the New York Serb Zack Novak, who fought in Bosnia in the 90s under the command of the legendary Serbian Chetnik governor Slavko Aleksic, are there any other Americans in the DPR armed forces?
– Correspondents and humanitarian workers can arrive. A lot of humanitarian aid came from America to Donbass, as well as from Great Britain and South Africa. But among the soldiers here, I think I'm the only American. At least for now.
I think that if an American volunteer comes to Donbass to join the ranks of the People's Militia, he will first of all contact me. Many people from the United States wrote to me and asked how to become volunteers, but I hold them back because I know that our DPR army does not yet really want to attract foreigners.
What is the reason for this attitude?
– Well, at least because foreigners don’t speak Russian. Some of them have no combat experience. That is, a person comes as a tourist with the words “I want to help you!”, but in the end it all ends with “Help me, please!”
But why did you manage to join the combat units of the DPR at one time?
– I arrived in December 2014, during a busy time. And then I was not sure that victory would be ours, and that I would live for more than three months. I didn’t want to die, but I understood that the likelihood of such a scenario was high. I spoke very little Russian when I arrived, but I am a veteran of the American army and a good soldier, my friends and comrades said - an excellent soldier, I have awards, in Donbass I worked at the airport, at Spartak, in Avdeevka. But you know, to work in serious and hot positions, it is enough to know only two Russian words: “Come on!” and “Fuck!”
This is a good joke, but tell me, was it difficult for you to adapt to the environment of Russian soldiers?
- Yes, sure. My first day at the position was in the Iversky Monastery, 400 meters from the new terminal of the Donetsk airport, where the “cyborgs” settled, not far from the control tower. I arrived at the monastery at one in the morning, and the man accompanying me said: “Sniper.” It would be like this in both English and Russian, and that was understandable.
Before that, I worked in the USA for ten years clearing trees (arborist - ed.), and it was really dangerous work at a 30-meter height. And I went to it every day with the understanding that this day could be my last. And when I came here to the first line, which is very dangerous, it felt like another working day in the USA. And I did not forget my work in the American army, the instructions of my instructors on how to set up tripwires, how to do the work of a sapper.
Was it easy to get used to Russian weapons?
- Well, in the USA there are Kalash too. This is a great weapon. I didn’t know Makarov, but now I also know it well. And I have one. And there is a Kalash at home. I never take them when I go out, of course everything is registered.
Russell, you have not faced the current operation as a member of the People's Militia. For what reasons did you leave the Corps?
– When I arrived in Donbass I was 54 years old. At first, my squad was from the “Essence of Time” movement. Then I worked for six months in the Vostok battalion, and from June 2015 in the Khan special forces battalion. And then I was already 55, I clearly felt that service in special forces was still for young people. And my commander, an excellent person, said that perhaps it would be better if I took up information warfare. And I accepted it, because I am a poet, and my soul is the soul of a poet. And my words reach their goal, they inspire people.
That is, when I am a soldier on the first line, then I am one of many, working with a machine gun at a distance of 400 meters, with an RPG at 900. And here my words are my cartridges, my computer is my weapon, and all this spreads throughout the world . And my videos were watched by more than a million people.
But although I am old, I am a soldier. I have a Kalash, so I think that if necessary, I will make a good partisan.
But now, as far as I know, you have also been affected by the information blockade, your channels have been deleted from social networks - how are you now going to reach an audience that is predominantly English-speaking?
– I am an information partisan. The enemy is blocking me and I am looking for other ways. Now there is a telegram, BitChute - an American alternative YouTube. It is not easy, of course, to bypass the prohibitions. Twitter banned me in 2016 with four thousand followers. I transferred my activities to Facebook - my pages were deleted there two years ago. Okay, I went to YouTube, and now YouTube has deleted me. And what?
My next video will be about how to create an account on VKontakte, where I now have seven thousand subscribers - this is more than I had on Facebook, and I will also transfer half of them to VKontakte. After which the United States, apparently, will come to the understanding that VKontakte and telegrams need to be banned. I had three author websites, two of them were closed, and two still exist, but now I just can’t go there.
To what extent did you manage to change the general mood of American society regarding the events in Donbass and Ukraine with your information war?
– My first work in the information war was the story of Anna Tuv, a woman from the DPR, whose house was destroyed after the shelling of dill, her husband and eldest daughter died, and she herself lost an arm. And I visited her two days after what happened. This was my first video, I made it at home, three days after our meeting in the hospital. And it had a very strong effect; I collected my first humanitarian aid specifically for her.
Ten thousand dollars were sent to her from America. I spoke about my intention to collect ten thousand dollars to my commander, but he did not believe me, and replied that maybe it would be possible to collect two thousand. But forty days after the video was released, I collected this amount. All thanks to the users of Facebook and Twitter.
I have always said that this is not a war between Ukraine and Russia, and not a civil war in Ukraine, but a war between the United States and Russia, and the devil with God. And when an American citizen saw what the regime was doing in Donbass - shelling houses, schools, kindergartens...
The large kindergarten "Harmony" in the Kievsky district of Donetsk, near the airport, came under fire many times. And all 250 windows of this huge building were broken. Our fund replaced all the windows - money came from all over the world.
I heard that your fund has recently started having problems in the USA...
– This is a very dangerous situation. The foundation is headed by my godmother, Lyudmila, she is originally from Donetsk, but has lived in Florida for the last twenty years, she is a very religious, Orthodox person. And the Ukrainian fascists came to the temple, of which she is a parishioner, and said: “We will kill you!”
At the same time, American intelligence agencies are constantly monitoring her and our foundation. Therefore, I stopped working with our foundation to divert the danger from them. For the last seven years, he has helped exclusively civilians - children, the elderly, and the disabled. And if he helped the militias, then its organizers would be sent to the American Gulag. And now I’m preparing a publication about the fact that I no longer work with this foundation, but I want to concentrate on helping heroes, defenders, as a volunteer. Now there are a lot of wounded.
Don't you miss your homeland?
– I love Donetsk, I love the DPR, I am a citizen of the DPR. I love Russia too, but Donetsk, the DPR is my home. And I will always protect this, my home, my shelter. I’ve been to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Crimea, Rostov-on-Don, it’s also cool, interesting, cultural places, but for me Donetsk is paradise, as if my whole life had been the road here.
But in your native Austin, Texas, in the South, in general, is there still a spirit of Dixie, Dixieland, different from the Yankees, Washington, USA?
- Yes, definitely. Certainly! There are a lot of intelligent, cultured people there who understand that the regime in Washington is real fascism. Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism, said that the best combination is corporatism and the power of the state. And this is so appropriate for today's America!
I understand that none of us are an oracle, but lately I have been asking all my interlocutors, including you: when, in your opinion, will the active phase of the operation in Ukraine end?
– When we go to Berlin (laughs). The situation is not easy right now, but that's normal. I was in the liberated territories - in Anadol, for example, I looked at the local people who were crying and saying: “Thank you! We love Russia!” And for people from there, this is, of course, the best thing that can be imagined. And victory will be ours. Only an idiot can think that Ukraine will defeat Russia, this is ridiculous.
You know, bro, two months ago I said that the Ukrainian army is ready to enter the centers of large cities in Donbass to fight there, hiding behind the civilian population. Because Russian aviation, Russian artillery, and Russian missiles will not operate in the cities. And this problem continues to this day. And then I said that Russia would reveal these plans and begin to act earlier. And then many of those who called and call themselves experts responded to this that Texas is a fool and there will be no war.
And only a real expert, US military analyst Scott Ritter, said the same thing as me. Previously, he openly stated that Iraq does not have bacteriological weapons. And my analysis was correct.
And this is what I think about the next two months: our armies - the republics and Russia, will take Kyiv and everything east of it. And after that they will stop. And they will control territories from Chernobyl in the north to the border with Moldova in the south.
After this, and I think there are secret agreements on this matter, NATO will enter western Ukraine. They will not fire a single cartridge towards Russian soldiers, but like dolls from a puppet theater, they will show their average people that “we stopped Putin, we saved western Ukraine.” And they will say that “Putin saw that NATO had arrived and was afraid to go further.” But everything east and south of Kyiv will be ours.
An American volunteer in the Donetsk People's Republic : "Everything east of Kiev will be ours."