U.S. national dies in Russian-controlled Donetsk - Russian journalist

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russell Bentley, a U.S. national, has died in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in Ukraine, Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia's state media outlet RT, wrote on Telegram on Friday.

Simonyan said Bentley had been "fighting there for our guys" and working with Russia's Sputnik news service. She did not say how he died.

Bentley, born in 1960, a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine whom Russian state media had described as a war correspondent, reportedly went missing on April 8, police in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region said in a statement last Friday.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)