In a contentious interview with 'Rolling Stone,' Russell “Texas” Bentley explains why he’s in Ukraine cheering on Russian troops
Bentley writes that his aim — which also happens to be Vladimir Putin’s aim — is to bring “Ukraine back into the Slavic family where it belongs and has been for 1,000 years.” As for the “bad people” he hopes to see the hammer dropped on? They seem to include not only the rulers of Ukraine but the leaders of his former American homeland. On VK — the Russian alternative to Facebook — Bentley
He was born Russell Bonner Bentley III to a wealthy family in Texas in 1960. “I grew up in a very exclusive area of Dallas called Highland Park,” he says. “It’s basically the Beverly Hills of Dallas.” Bentley was the “black sheep” of the family as a teenager, he says, drawn to hard left causes. “I was reading Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara” he says. “I understood the Vietnamese were right to defend their land against foreign invaders, and that the United States was wrong.
In his professional life, Bentley wasn’t just promoting pot, he was dealing it — importing substantial quantities of weed from Texas to Minnesota. And by 1996, Bentley got tripped up by the DEA. He was arrested for felony trafficking and sentenced to federal prison. But only months before he was scheduled to be released in 1999, according to court documents, Bentley broke out of the minimum security facility where he was being held.
Bentley’s disgust grew through the “bogus” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he insists the final straw was the 2011 Western military action that toppled Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. “He was one of the greatest,” Bentley says fondly of the larger-than-life dictator whom the International Criminal Court accused of. Bentley says that when “Gadhafi was brutally murdered on video, it really pissed me off.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Opinion | Will Ukraine Be the Graveyard of Putinism?'Never has the world been in greater need of a new internationalism that is not defined militarily (NATO) or just regionally (European Union).'
Read more »
Video of Texas man ‘on the front line’ with Russian soldiers stirs anger onlineBefore he became “Comrade Texas,” Russell Bonner Bentley was wanted by U.S. Marshals and accused of trafficking drugs.
Read more »
Bill O’Reilly Blasts Fox News Hosts’ Ukraine Coverage: ‘A Disservice to the American People’Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly put his old network on blast, saying “it’s a totally different operation now” while criticizing television news at large for spouting propaganda.
Read more »
Ted Cruz: Texas Should Be 'Ground Zero' for Crypto IndustryTexas Senator Ted Cruz sees his state becoming the world's biggest cryptocurrency hub, doubling down on his support for the fledgling sector
Read more »
We'll Forever Be Haunted By a Video of Shelley Luther Singing 'Sweet Child O' Mine'Since she first made headlines for defying lockdown orders for Texas businesses, Shelley Luther has become a multi-hyphenate household name as a salon owner-turned-political-martyr/aspiring musician.
Read more »
1st openly transgender NYPD detective shares his storyDet. Ori Harbor is sharing his story of how he became the NYPD's first openly transgender detective on the force.
Read more »