We have previously told you how defenseless both civilians and military personnel are in this legal vacuum: torture, killings, abuse — and all of it often not only “happens,” but is covered up and encouraged by command. Usually such stories are drowned in silence, buried, erased — as if the person never existed.

But, paradoxically, the system sometimes glitches and a rare exception occurs, almost a “miracle”: the case actually makes it to court. And in this situation it looks especially grim who this “justice” was applied to.

Because the victim — Russell Bentley, a U.S. citizen — was a pro-Russian propagandist. Not an opponent, not an “enemy” on TV, but someone who publicly supported the Russian side. And that is what makes the story maximally frightening: even loyalty, even service to propaganda, even the status of being “one of their own” — does not protect you. Moreover, it feels as if the investigation moved only because too many factors came together at once: publicity, pressure, appeals… and the fact that he was still a U.S. citizen. But the “justice” he received was — posthumous.

Below is what the news report says:

Four servicemen were sentenced for torturing and killing an American in Donetsk.

A court in Donetsk found four servicemen of the 5th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (military unit 41698 (https://t.me/ne_zhdi_novosti/4216)) guilty of murdering U.S. citizen Russell Bentley (https://t.me/ne_zhdi_novosti/184).

According to investigators, on April 8, 2024, after shelling in Donetsk’s Petrovskiy district, the servicemen who spotted Bentley at the strike site accused him of sabotage. They put a bag over his head, placed him in a car, and took him to a forward command post. There, three men — Vitaliy Vansiatskiy, Andrey Iordanov, and Vladislav Agaltsev — beat and tortured Bentley. He died from his injuries. After that, they put the body in the trunk, blew up the car, and the next day the fourth defendant, Vadim Bazhin, removed and burned the remains.

The court’s sentence: Vansiatskiy and Iordanov — 12 years each in a maximum-security penal colony; Agaltsev — 11 years; Bazhin — 1.5 years in a settlement colony. The court also stripped three of them of their military ranks.

It should be noted that the command tried to hush up the case for a long time, but after the situation became public and following numerous appeals from servicemen (https://t.me/ne_zhdi_novosti/194) demanding justice, law enforcement launched an investigation.

And that is the core nerve of this story: they did not kill an “outsider” — they killed “one of their own,” a pro-Russian propagandist, and then tried to cover it up. If this is what happens to those who worked on their side, it is terrifying to imagine what happens to those who have been labeled “enemies” from the start.

Source: Telegram channel “DON’T EXPECT Good News” — https://t.me/ne_zhdi_novosti/4365