A court in Russian-controlled Ukraine sentenced four Russian soldiers to jail on Monday for the killing of an American communist who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014.

Moscow rarely punishes its soldiers in Ukraine for committing crimes, portraying them as national heroes at home.

The court in Russian-held Donetsk found the soldiers guilty of beating Russell Bentley, 64, to death in April 2024, after they mistook him for a U.S. spy. The soldiers put his body in the back of a car and blew it up, the court said.

Bentley — the subject of a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone magazine titled "The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Frontline Putin propagandist" — was a local celebrity in the city of Donetsk, where he lived, and his disappearance sparked outrage.

The self-styled communist — known as "Texas" — often made social media clips backing Moscow's Ukraine campaign, produced content for Russia's state-backed media and had fought alongside pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

Two of the soldiers, Major Vitaly Vansyatsky and Lieutenant Andrei Iordanov, were sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony and stripped of their military titles. Sergeant Vladislav Agaltsev was handed 11 years while another soldier was given 1.5 years for "concealing crimes."

The court said the troops did not know Bentley and detained him as he prepared to film the consequences of a Ukrainian strike, thinking he was a spy.

It said the soldiers "reported to their military unit command on the discovery of a saboteur," before putting him in a car with a bag on his head, where they "beat and tortured" him to "get a confession" — ultimately killing him. They then put his body in the trunk and blew up the car, the court said.

Russian soldiers in Ukraine have long been accused by Kyiv and international rights groups of torturing captives.

Bentley, who served in the U.S. Army in his youth, had been granted Russian nationality and portrayed himself as the only American fighting for Moscow.

Bentley used crowdfunding websites to fund his war efforts in Ukraine, BBC News reported. In November 2014, he launched a GoFundMe page to finance a "fact finding mission" to Donbas, raising $2,000, BBC News reported.

In 2022, he told Newsweek that he had several times been "within seconds or inches of death" but added that: "I believe in guardian angels because of how lucky I've been here."

Bentley was affiliated with the Essence of Time movement, a Russia-based communist group which seeks to create "USSR 2.0," according to BBC News. Bentley's videos were hosted on the group's YouTube page, and in the clips, he encouraged fellow Americans to join him in eastern Ukraine.

According to the BBC, Bentley said in one video: "Don't show up here broke… You can do a crowd fundraiser - a GoFundMe or an Indiegogo. Say you're coming here to help. Say you're coming here to find the truth. Don't say you're coming here to fight."

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