[1][2] Bentley was a popular YouTuber until his channel was deleted in early 2022, and he also worked for the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency as a war correspondent.

[3][4][5] Prior to his activities in Donbas, Bentley was a marijuana activist and convicted drug smuggler who spent five years in prison.

At age 30, he ran as a U.S. Senate third-party candidate for the Grassroots Party in the 1990 election, gathering 1.65% of the vote.

[9] During his time he nicknamed himself "Texas," described by Benoît Vitkine of Le Monde as a "nom de guerre".

[11] Bentley decided to fight for the Donetsk People's Republic, expressing a strong commitment to what he perceived as a "battle against fascism", driven by the desire to take a stand against what he saw as "injustices in Ukraine".

[13][3] Alexander Khodakovsky, one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed DPR, demanded in his telegram channel that “those who killed Russell Bentley” be punished, but later deleted this message.

The Investigative Committee of Russia found that Agaltsev and Yordanov killed Bentley on 8 April, placed his body in a vehicle which was subsequently blown up in an attempt to cover up the murder, then moved his remains to "another location" with the assistance of the other two soldiers.

[20] The suspects were said to be members of the Russian Army's 5th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade based in Donetsk Oblast and under the command of Major General Pavel Klimenko.