Wave of Murders: Mass Hunters Killing People Across the Country

In the past few months, there has been a real wave of mass murders of people hunting across the country. Moreover, they kill not only each other, but also ordinary residents who have no connection at all with sports hunting!

I will start, probably, with the most high-profile case that occurred on November 16, 2024. I deliberately waited some time for the relevant information to be received! Since in the first days they actively "muddied the water," either confirming or denying the involvement of a high-ranking hunter in a murder.

So, on November 16, in the Olkhon district of the Irkutsk region, the head of the criminal investigation department of the regional Department of Internal Affairs, 52-year-old Andrey Zhbanov, went hunting with a group of other high-ranking law enforcement officers (including retirees). They decided to kill animals near the village of Baganta. As the media write, they gorged on vodka "to the extreme." There were a total of 13 people in the group.

A local 62-year-old resident was with them, who acted as a driver. That is, his task was to drive the animal towards the "firing squad." Everything, actually, is very simple: he ran towards them, and Zhbanov shot him on the spot.

That's where the story ends. A photo of the head of the criminal investigation department is below!

At the same time, similar killings have been going on for a long bloody history since the beginning of autumn. Moreover, we only know about those messages that appeared in the media!

Let me give you examples of confirmed murders recently.

• In the Baydaratsky tundra of Yamal, a group of hunters went to kill animals. On November 16, they started "drinking vodka" and started arguing! One grabbed a shotgun and shot his opponent. He wounded the third, who managed to reach the first-aid post and survived.

  
  

• On November 20, in the Irkutsk region, near the 1385 km of the R-255 "Siberia" highway, hunters were having fun, killing animals at night with a thermal imager. On the screen appeared a 31-year-old woman who stopped near the highway in her car and wanted to rest from the road. The hunter decided that it was "wild game" and shot twice at the "wild animal." Unfortunately, the woman died.

  
  

  Now it has become known that these were poachers! They jumped into a UAZ and tried to escape. Inside were a father with a son: 48-year-old Pavel and 27-year-old Nikita, as well as their 42-year-old companion. They shot the girl through the neck.

  
  

• On November 17, 2024, an unknown person shot two hunters in the Taldom district of the Moscow region. One died, the other survived. The shooter was not found.

  
  

• Earlier, on October 5, in Yakutia, a 14-year-old teenager was killed with a hunting rifle. But it is only now that information has appeared that a local official was involved in the tragedy. He returned home from hunting in October and put a loaded rifle in his safe, leaving the keys in it out of habit. And then he calmly went to Yakutsk. Two teenagers came to his daughter, who started "fooling around" in front of the girl and, taking out the rifle, one shot the other in the head. He died on the spot.

  
  

• On November 12, in the Afanasyevsky district of the Kirov region, a hunter shot another hunter with a shotgun while hunting. Earlier, on September 13, in the Zuyevsky district of the region, there was a similar situation: there, too, a local resident-hunter shot another.

  
  

• On October 28, in the Moscow region, a hunter shot a man in the forest, mistaking him for an animal.

  
  

• On October 12, six hunters tried to kill a moose in Bashkortostan, but one of them, aiming at the animal, killed his father with a direct shot to the head.

  
  

• On October 26, in the Irbit district, a 60-year-old father-in-law shot his 35-year-old son-in-law while hunting. He says that he took off his carbine in a case, but it was loaded, and with an accurate shot he killed his father-in-law.

  
  

• On October 30, in the Sverdlovsk region, a hunter mistook a girl for a wild animal and killed her. A 42-year-old local resident in the Baikal region wanted to have fun, shooting animals using a thermal imager. He saw an 18-year-old girl and shot her. She died on the spot.

  
  

• On November 8, in the Danilov district of the Yaroslavl region, a hunter shot his partner in the forest. He says he just wanted to adjust the gun on his shoulder, but it "accidentally fired" and shot another hunter.

  
  

• On October 21, in the Armizonsky district of the Tyumen region, a high-ranking hunter was shot! He was the head of the local Emergency Situations Department. He and his friend went to kill animals. His dear friend aimed at a fox, but decided: why not kill his comrade? But, he says, it happened accidentally.

  
  

• On September 7, in the Beryozovsky district of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a hunter shot another hunter in the head. It seems that he was even able to be hospitalized, but he died a few days later.

  
  
• On October 26, in Naro-Fominsk (Moscow region), a hunter shot a local resident at night, mistaking him for a wild animal.

These are only those murders that became known in the mass media and that happened recently, that is, the most relevant fresh data.

What can I say?

Wave of murders, and no one is able to realize what they are doing and why. Everyone says: "Accident." At the same time, none of the cases mentioned was necessary hunting for food. All these cases are the killing of wild animals "for the soul," in the style of: meet, drink vodka with friends, kill someone in the forest.

I previously wrote a separate note about similar cases in late summer - early autumn, when a huge number of hunting murders were committed using thermal imagers. This is a very "expensive pleasure," which indicates that hunters are prosperous people who do not need to kill animals for food.

The industry of paid killings, where huge amounts of money are simply made. I suppose that they go on a sports hunt to "relieve tension," and all this turns into the killing of people. Moreover, while in many cases they simply kill each other, in some cases ordinary people who have no relation to recreational shooting at animals become victims.

The more "tension" grows in society, the more often we will see such news about the mass murder of people. Up to the point that they will consciously kill each other, and then justify it by saying that it "happened accidentally."

What else needs to be noted for sure? And again.

The regions of Russia have rushed to compete to turn their regions into a hunting ground as quickly as possible. The fact is that in recent years, the hunting industry has been growing rapidly, including due to the market opening up abroad: in poor African countries, for example, where foreigners have been going to shoot animals for decades, there is now practically no one to shoot at. And to top it all off, there are countless diseases, wars, and abnormal cataclysms such as drought and heat.

The flow of trophy hunters has rushed to find new places to kill animals. And here our authorities made a generous offer: you can kill animals in our Russian taiga! It turned out that this is an extremely profitable business, for which many hunters are willing to pay huge amounts of money. For example, killing animals for foreigners can cost up to $10,000 per person, about which I also recently published a separate post with screenshots of offers from "Russian Safari."

In Russia, this has led to the growth of the sports hunting industry and an increase in demand among the population. Today we have over 5 million fully legalized hunters, and according to official data, a third of all publicly accessible forest lands have been transferred to private hands for the organization of animal killings.

That's the trouble in our Russian taiga.

© PAVEL PASHKOV