A Statement from U.S. Friends of the Soviet People
Sanctions are common amongst American citizens today in 2022; just try adding the word ‘Cuba’ to a PayPal transaction, and find your account frozen. Censorship is now a dinner table talking point for working class Americans, as our Facebook profiles are restricted, or our Twitter accounts are suspended. The writer of these article has experienced these actions anyways, from 2017 onwards, long before 2022. And before 2017, there was Comrade Russell “Texas” Bentley, who went to Donbass in 2014, in response to the atrocities and one-sided media reporting he saw on television of post-coup Ukraine.
Russell “Texas” Bentley had lived a colorful life within the United States, from smuggling marijuana, being incarcerated and escaping, to running a tree-trimming business,but he had always been a socialist, sporadically attending ISO events in Seattle (International Socialist Order, a Trotskyist 1970s New Left group which as of recently dissolved itself into the Democratic Socialists of America organization).
He went to Russia in 2014, crossing the border into the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic, with little money and only a few duffel bags of clothes and uniforms, as this was in his mind,‘the right thing to do.’ And with some disbelief by the military recruiters in the DPR, Russell then began training and entered the ranks as a DPR soldier. Our comrade Russell Bentley survived battle after battle, once only feet away from a mortar strike. He gained knowledge and prestige. The Russian-speaking inhabitants called him “Texas”, first of all because this word’s Russian translation is easy to pronounce, and second, because he is from Texas. And so Texas did the work of the poor bloody infantry, paid his time, and earned his respect, and learned new trades. He is still a soldier, but he also married, and began working in information warfare and humanitarian aid.
Texas runs a humanitarian aid channel long before the 2022 US/NATO-Russia-Ukraine conflict, an organization called Donbass Human Aid (donbasshumanaid.com), which supports children, families and the reconstruction of infrastructure in the Donbass region. He also writes articles and does reporting across many websites, and he has a Telegram channel (t.me/TXDPR). It is peculiar to be correct about future things which transpire, and Texas was a ‘premature antifascist’ (taking these words describing American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington battalions of 1930s Spain) long before the 2022 conflict. What suddenly became news to everyday Americans was always news for those who followed the reports from Comrade Russell from Donbass. And so logically, the US government shutdown all of Comrade Texas’ social media pages and channels.
Texas’ work and actions have been absolved by history,and we in the Party of Communists USA are appreciative of his continued contact with us, likewise with other American expatriots Jeff Monson and Donald Courter, who have all contributed to US Friends of the Soviet People publications and events like the celebration of the Great October Socialist Revolution. We look forward to further reports of success, and will send a delegation in the future to our dear comrades in the Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
For more information: www.usfriendsofthesovietpeople.info