The phrase “there are no former intelligence officers” can be called commonplace, if not banal. But even if such a person retired from service, into the reserve, he forever remains faithful to his work.
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Group Veterans Organization special purpose state security agencies "Vympel". Perhaps someone will think that veterans of special services are more socially protected than people of other professions and occupations. Is this true? And what role do community organizations play in protecting the people they represent? Questions for our interlocutor, a guest of the program Eduard Vitalievich Bendersky, President of the public organization of veterans of the special purpose group of state security agencies "Vympel".
BENDERSKY: Our units are not so numerous, therefore, from the point of view of social protection, it is still much easier to protect our employees than the population of Russia as a whole. One of the main tasks that our organization solves is precisely providing assistance in the social security of our children. Working with the families of the victims - providing not only material assistance; assistance in the rehabilitation of wounded employees - unfortunately, we have a fairly large number of wounded: in the last year alone - about forty people. The intensity of the use of units is so great that the guys can even receive more than one injury within a year...
- Does this happen in hot spots, or does this circumstance not matter?
BENDERSKY: The fact is that our units are always in hot spots. If major terrorist acts - Nord-Ost, Beslan - quickly become public knowledge, then measures to combat terrorism are carried out systematically, and not only in the North Caucasus and, unfortunately, they cannot do without losses and injuries. Therefore, we solve these problems as well. In general, we interact very closely with the division. Despite the fact that recently the state has been paying considerable attention to the topic of combating terrorism and our unit in particular, there are issues that cannot be resolved without our help. We carry out a large number of socially significant events sporting events, as a sports marathon in memory of fallen employees, we provide assistance in holding shooting competitions, we ourselves participate in these competitions - thank God, it’s still working out!
- Do you shoot with both hands?!
BENDERSKY: Not quite like that: we have competitions in sniper shooting and shooting from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. There are, of course, competitions in other methods of firing, but we no longer participate in them...
- You are a young man, and one could imagine a more adult, mature person in the rank of president of a veterans organization. On the other hand, intelligence officers become veterans at a fairly young age.
BENDERSKY: At thirty-three to thirty-four years old, the guys already become pensioners. But I never thought that I would become the head of a public organization. But six years ago, our veterans of the first wave suggested that I think about the prospects for such leadership. Over the years, I think a lot has been achieved.
- Now there is a lot of talk about how difficult it is to organize conscription for military service, how unpopular military affairs is among young people. But it’s not for nothing that special forces and special services are called special units. Don't you have such problems? Do guys come to you more willingly?
BENDERSKY: Last December, the Alpha veterans and I flew to Beslan and met with children who were freed by our guys; We brought them as a gift an exhibition about the activities of special forces. When we met with these guys, I got a very strong impression that almost all of them would like to join our unit and asked how to do this. We have no problems with staffing, despite the fact that the level of wages leaves much to be desired. But in our units they serve not for money, but first of all for the idea, for the brotherhood, for the shoulder of a comrade who is nearby. Therefore, we do not experience any problems with acquisition...
(Full version of the program "In First Person" with Eduard Bendersky - in audio recording).
Ed.)
[...] Soldiers of the Alpha group of the FSB Special Forces Center (TSSN FSB) are writing to you.
Food for thought about arrests of MUR employees .
We have no doubt that this is primarily an election campaign. Now let's try to explain why we think so.
According to our information, personnel changes are planned in the leadership of the security forces sometime closer to the fall. Patrushev and Gryzlov are going to be promoted to the Kremlin. The post of FSB director will most likely go to General Pronichev, the first deputy. In place of the first deputy, they may appoint the head of the FSB TsSN, General Tikhonov, the “hero” of “Nord-Ost” (they received stars for “Nord-Ost” by the same decree with Pronichev). Novaya Gazeta wrote about this. (Also, General Tikhonov is the “hero” of the notorious Ryazan “exercises.” - Ed.)
Gryzlov should be replaced by Rashid Nurgaliev, now the first deputy minister of internal affairs, and in the recent past - deputy director of the FSB, good friend Pronicheva. They worked together for a long time - both in Karelia and in Lubyanka.
The entire operation was mainly planned in Lubyanka, in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, and was carried out by the special forces of the TsSN. The FSB Internal Security Directorate is headed by General Shishin - the youngest general at Lubyanka (promoted by Pronichev), who made a dizzying career, has been personally devoted to Pronichev for many years. Before this appointment, he was the head of the FSB in Sochi. Novaya Gazeta published information about him related to the construction of real estate in Dagomys.
Now let's talk about why we think this is window dressing. Remember how this operation was covered on television. We have repeatedly carried out and are carrying out similar operations, but we never allow television crews and journalists there. If the operation is filmed, it is only by our cameraman, and these events are told about only after a certain period of time, and then not always. This time there was almost a live broadcast, and even with comments from Gryzlov.
And now about who stole how much. Look how our gentlemen generals live, what real estate they own, what companies they protect. These operas from MUR will seem like homeless people from three stations to everyone. It has long been no secret that any of the leadership of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs each has several large companies in which they are listed as founders or receive money for the “roof.” One of the deputy directors, for example, had his share in Three Pillars. Moreover, they own all this wealth in close cooperation with the lads.
At the headquarters of the FSB TsSN, headed by General Tikhonov, there is a legendary figure in the center - Colonel S. By specialty, this gentleman is the main sniper of the center. With a modest officer's salary, while still a captain, he managed to build a three-story cottage outside the city with a fleet of luxury foreign cars; in his garage there were about five cars and several motorcycles from the best Japanese companies. Calculate how much just one motorcycle can cost. Together with members of one of the criminal groups, he owns his own car service center and restaurant in the center of Moscow. At some point, the prosecutor's office had questions for him, but thanks to the patronage of higher powers in the leadership of the FSB, all problems were resolved.
Now - about one of the sponsors of the TsSN FSB. Once upon a time, a modest officer Eduard Bendersky served in the center. He retired with the rank of senior lieutenant. In civilian life, he created a private security company (private security company) “Vympel-A” under the “roof” of our center. It is personally supervised by our General Tikhonov.
Bendersky drives a Gelendvagen jeep and has both a special ticket and a cover certificate. Almost all banquets, concerts, and competitions are paid for by his private security company. Mr. Bendersky himself regularly comes to the sauna to take a steam bath, despite the fact that this sauna is located on the territory of a special-security facility of the Center for Social Security. He prefers to steam in the company of the center's management.
Now remember the events at Dubrovka. Immediately after the successful assault that we carried out with the Vympel fighters, some of the leaders of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs told on television how the preparation for the assault and the assault itself took place.
Imagine the amazement of many of us when in one of the stories we saw Mr. Bendersky, a civilian who had long since retired from the police. He, sitting in front of the monitors, described in detail how and from where the special forces moved around the captured building, naming the numbers of departments and groups. It goes without saying that the information and video recordings made by our operators were provided to him by the center’s management.
As a businessman, one can understand him - he was simply advertising himself and his enterprise, but this is a direct leak of information from our leadership.
Here it is - evidence for the prosecutor's office to initiate a criminal case regarding the disclosure of secret information. But, as we see, there were and are untouchables in our country - this is not America. Only in our country is it possible for FSB generals and prosecutors to wash together with businessmen in the bathhouse of the Central Security Service of the FSB.
Now - about something more painful.
Taking advantage of the fact that we are a secret agency, all appointments to leadership positions are made in secret from everyone, including us.
Recently, Colonel V. was appointed commander of the Alpha group. Alpha is combat unit, one hundred percent of our personnel went through Chechnya, many went through Afghanistan, participated in combat operations, and our commander was a man who spent his entire life in various positions in the personnel department - a professional clerk. His last position was as head of the personnel department of the Center for Social Security. This is a person who has no experience of combat operations, not even simple experience of operational work.
And this is already the second commander imposed on us from the outside. His predecessor was also a personnel officer. He came to us as a colonel, received a general - and rushed higher.
The situation is similar in the Vympel group. Group commander U. spent his entire service in the personnel department.
All these appointments only lead to an even greater outflow of truly competent military officers from the bodies. What remains are mostly opportunists who look their bosses in the face.
Due to the nature of our service, we spend a lot of time in Chechnya. Meanwhile, the situation there has not improved at all, despite what everyone is shown on TV. The militants even in the center, in Grozny, not to mention the mountainous regions, feel quite confident. Everyone pays tribute to the militants - from ordinary residents to the Chechen police.
Our base in Khankala guards itself, not the civilian population. It is very dangerous for our military to move around the city without heavy escort: they can shoot from anywhere.
And one more thing: according to Kadyrov’s order (approved by the Kremlin), almost all militants who have laid down their arms are automatically enrolled in the Chechen police.
So draw your own conclusions. A terrorist attack like Nord-Ost could happen anywhere, anytime.
Sincerely, Alpha fighters
28.07.2003
Interview with Eduard Bendersky.
— How long have you been hunting?
— Yes, I won my first trophy when I was ten or eleven years old.
— Did you start with your father?
- Yes. My father served as a border guard in Turkmenistan. A fertile region in terms of hunting, great places!
— What does hunting mean to you?
- IN different stages In my life, I associated hunting with different things. In childhood and adolescence, this is an opportunity to communicate with your father and his friends. Our family, like many military families, did not get together often (I actually lived with my grandmother for two years, and I also had to live in a boarding school), so the opportunity to spend time hunting with my father gave a double positive charge.
When I served myself, I did not have the opportunity to hunt. This was a period of time taken out of my hunting practice. It’s good that then such an opportunity arose. Today, for me, hunting is an outlet, an opportunity to psychologically break away from the workload and enjoy communication with nature and friends.
— What if you fail to catch the animal?
— I never chase record trophies. There is no such dependence. But I remember the unsuccessful hunts, when there was no chance of catching the animal. For example, in Magadan, when I was looking for an Okhotsk ram, I spent three years looking for it!
Or in Iran. We walked through the mountains for three days, and only on the fourth, returning to camp, did we see a ram. The shooting conditions were very difficult. Distance over 400 meters, colossal crosswind speed. I shot and missed. But I still received a lot of positive emotions. I looked around the country, talked to people, walked in the mountains, and three years later I returned to Iran and got this ram.
When you make a mistake or take an inaccurate shot, you involuntarily begin to analyze why this happened. Previously, he shot well and hit. Why is there a miss now? And in the end you realize that you just had to train more.
I don’t feel any remorse that the hunt was unsuccessful. The object of the hunt is, of course, desirable, but that is not the main thing.
Photo from the archive of Eduard Bendersky. |
— I saw your trophy room. It's hard to imagine that you've had many unsuccessful hunts. Did the skills you acquired while hunting help you in your service?
- I think not. And the skills weren’t that strong. Late 80s. The border guards had special opportunities for hunting with rifled weapons- what is there to hide! My father hunted with an SVD, and he also had to shoot from a machine gun. This, of course, has nothing to do with normal hunting.
When I was with my father, I mostly shot with a gun. This was mainly feather hunting - pheasants, ducks or pigeons. After it, I sat and cleaned the bird for half a day, then loaded cartridges for half a day. The next morning, before my father went to work, we again went to the foothills, had time to hunt and return home. After that he left for work.
I think that now in the mountains the skills that I acquired over the years of service help me a lot. Mountains mean patience and work, which in the army is called “marching tension.” The main problems of hunters in the mountains lie not in physiology, but in psychology. If you know how to overcome your fear of hard work, then there will be no problems.
You look at a mountain and, no matter how big, high or steep it may seem to you, you go up. You stop, rest, move on and sooner or later you climb this mountain. If you think a lot about how you will get there, how you will go down, if you get tired - you won’t get tired, if you freeze - you won’t freeze, then you will always find excuses not to go.
Of course, all this is superimposed on experience, preparation, physiological state hunter, his training, the ability to choose the right equipment so that it is optimal in weight and solves the main problems. You can also create comfort in the mountains, which will allow you to fully relax and recuperate. If you are not able to properly arrange your life, sooner or later the mountains will break you.
— Does this apply to your independent hunts?
“Let’s not deceive ourselves or anyone else.” Today there is no need to talk about relatively independent hunts. I would simply divide the hunts into more wild ones, such as in Siberia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Nepal, and gentle ones, like in Iran, when in any case you return to the base camp.
Where hunts involve multi-day treks and separate camps, I try to carry everything myself. I always have my tent and sleeping bag with me. It’s easier and… clearer for me.
— Today, I must say, there are no problems with the selection of high-quality equipment.
- Certainly. My double layer tent weighs about 500 grams. A very warm sleeping bag. Once, at -25°, I had to spend the night in a sleeping bag designed for -18°. I came back and immediately bought one at -40°.
— I often met former military personnel among African professional hunters. When the fighting in southern Africa ended, these guys large quantities let's go hunting. I asked one: “Why hunting? Nothing else to do? I liked his answer: “When I’m in the bush, it keeps me on edge, as if I’m young and active again.” Don’t you have that feeling when hunting?
- Agree. When you deal with weapons for many years, they become part of your life, you become fused with them. Probably, in hunting there are some psychological references to the past, to the years when I served.
I have a good friend in Zimbabwe, Patrick Mavros, who became a jeweler after serving in the Rhodesian Salusa special forces. He now makes wonderful African-themed pieces in silver and ivory. He and I immediately found a common language. He's a wonderful person. He showed me his old photographs.
— Are mountain hunts your favorite?
- Definitely. This is at the level of acquired instinct. I hunted with my father mainly in the mountains. Even now, before my eyes, hundreds of herds of urials, goitered gazelles, the Kopetdag mountains, heights of up to 3.5 thousand meters.
By the way, there I first saw markhors, Central Asian leopards. But in my life there are all types of hunts. I really love the spring hunt, which we wait for so long all winter. For me, its main value lies in meeting friends.
Without undue modesty, I will say that 80% of our hunting team consists of people whom I brought into the hunt. Only on mountain hunts do I go either alone or with a very narrow circle of friends. The reason is simple: mountain hunting is not widespread. The time factor also plays a significant role.
When I'm alone, I try to shoot quickly so I can get back to work. When I’m with someone, I involuntarily adapt to my partner. You can’t leave a person in the mountains, you have to wait... Of course, friends are offended, they say: “He brought us on a hunt, but he himself began to go on collective hunts less often!”
Photo from the archive of Eduard Bendersky. |
— You have your own farm. Is this some kind of anchor that ties you to a place, or just an additional opportunity for hunting?
— Unfortunately, I don’t go there as often as I would like. In spring and autumn I go on driven hunts and in winter with my family - a maximum of four times a year. Your own hunting ground is an expensive toy that you treat with special trepidation.
When we took over the farm, we hunted from one to three wild boars per season. It took several years until things were put in order, until proper biotechnology was organized. But the beast appeared. At the end of the hunting season in February, we counted up to 170 wild boar at feeders in one evening. But the plague hit us hard. In one week, more than three hundred heads died.
— Do you have any idea how the plague got to you?
— The story with ASF is, to put it mildly, murky. But we don’t have a wild boar, that’s a fact. After the outbreak of the plague, we began to think: what to do? And they decided to go down the path of game breeding. This problem stimulated us to take a serious step. We made large investments in the purchase of land, in the creation of an open-air cage, in planting the necessary crops, the formation of a broodstock of animals, its vaccination, etc.
Today we have an established enclosure farm with a total area of about 800 hectares. Some of them are intended for maintaining breeding stock, some for population management. We have sika, whitetail and red deer, fallow deer. We purchased some mouflon, but it didn’t suit us. But deer breed very well.
— How do you build relationships with local hunters?
“Firstly, we created jobs, and secondly, we attract local residents to driven hunts and gladly share meat with them. We issue permits for those who want to hunt in the pen. There are practically no local hunters left, but those who have experience, as I said, we somehow attract to work in the hunting industry.
— Is there poaching?
- Was. But it seems to me that we managed to establish a certain order through a whole range of preventive work. And there were all sorts of stories, even with an attack on our ranger both from civilians and from people in uniform. And we had to react harshly to what happened.
- So you climbed to the top somewhere in Yakutia - almost 3000 meters above sea level. We spotted a handsome trophy stag. And suddenly something hit you in the head. Can you refuse the shot?
- Can. If I see that the animal is clearly smaller than the trophy that I have or that I am counting on, I will refuse the shot. A sense of proportion should be inherent in every person. You need to be able to tell yourself “stop” in time.
- If, having come as a guest to hunt, you realize that here everyone is shooting at everyone and in all directions, how will you behave?
— It’s unlikely that such a situation is possible, since I haven’t gone hunting with strangers for a long time. For a number of reasons, and primarily because I don’t want to get into a similar situation. Hunting is relaxation. And you want to relax with people who are pleasant and understandable to you. After all, it is unknown how a stranger with a weapon will behave.
But I definitely think that in a similar situation you cannot remain silent, drop everything and go home. At a minimum, you need to ask the person who invited you to hunt to reassure your guests. I don’t allow this kind of thing in my household.
— Now, when you need to be able to be both politically correct and polite, have you remained as brave as you were, say, 30 years ago?
“With age you become wiser and more restrained, which is why I act differently today than in my youth.” That's what life experience is for, to learn and draw conclusions. Impulsiveness is the lot of the young.
The idea that hunting is the work of the brave, in my opinion, is a hoax. I would classify it as a sporting pastime. Yes, mountain hunting involves fighting with yourself, with physical difficulties and overcoming, but this is not a fight with an enemy who can respond with dignity.
In my life there was only one case when during a hunt I had to show some courage - to go at night to pick up a wounded leopard (this was my first hunt for one). I thought we would wait until the morning, but the piach said that we couldn’t put it off until the morning, we had to go right now to get the beast.
I took a Kalashnikov assault rifle, the peych had a pistol. The leopard jumped on us, and I shot him with a machine gun and a professional hunter with a pistol. The beast fell dead at our feet.
They say that this story is still told in those parts. The trackers, by the way, refused to come with us. It was just the two of us with the pey. It was not an easy story.
Photo from the archive of Eduard Bendersky. |
— Have you ever had such stories with a bear or a wild boar?
- No, it wasn’t with a bear. There was a case when a wounded boar attacked our friend and cut his hand (it’s good that he didn’t open it like a tin can!). This cleaver was hiding in the snow, like a bear in a den, jumped out of a snowdrift and attacked the hunter as he and his friend passed by.
A friend was lucky. The dog grabbed the animal, he was distracted, and his comrade shot. The weight in the hog was more than 150 kilograms.
— How did it happen that you ended up in RORS?
- Absolute accident. Vladimir Alekseevich Pekhtin invited me. He knew A.A. Ulitin and as a hunter knew the problems of RORS. Pekhtin suggested that I consider heading the Association.
I didn’t answer right away - for me it was from a completely different life. But I thought about it, consulted with friends and accepted the offer. I don't regret it at all. I hope that the people I worked with don’t regret it either.
From the moment I arrived, I waged local wars for three or four months to clean out that bug infestation. I had to tinker around and restore basic order there. Ten years have passed, but order has remained. Everything works, everything exists, the museum has been restored, the hotel is fully operational. All infrastructure is in decent condition. Normal working conditions have been created for people.
— Did you also have to restore order throughout the country?
- Somewhere, yes. Of course, I couldn’t do everything. Everyone has a limit to what they can do. There is only one person in the country who has no limit - the president. But his capabilities are also limited by the Law. And it is extremely difficult for the head of even a very large public organization to solve all the problems that exist in the industry.
It is an erroneous opinion that the leadership of the Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz could make some kind of revolution in the hunting management system. Of course not! We couldn't even solve all our questions.
The Association unites legal entities, so not all the initiatives that I promoted were understood by my colleagues. For example, I proposed amending the Charter and limiting the election of the chairman to two terms. My colleagues did not support this.
I also had other initiatives (introduce a single price for a trip, structure the making of key decisions), but they remained initiatives, and I perfectly understand why. Some regional chairmen hampered the development of their societies. It was not possible to part with everyone, although in a number of regions, with our assistance, new people came to leadership and are still working successfully.
Overall, RORS was a great experience for me; I in no way regret the years I spent there. It was a part of my life that I devoted six and a half years to. I did everything I could do for the RORS Association.
But having seen the limit of his capabilities, he honestly spoke about it and left, while keeping good relationship with many regional chairmen - they still call me, and we meet periodically.
I think that I made the right decision then. Another the right step I did it by inviting a talented person to work in Moscow - Tatyana Aramileva.
The Central Caucasian tour, first described by A.N. Severtsov, is considered a transitional morph from the Dagestan to the Kuban tur. Photo from the archive of Eduard Bendersky. |
— Don’t you think that, having good contact with Pekhtin, you could do more from the point of view of legislation?
- Perhaps I could. The more I immersed myself in the work of the Association, the more clearly I understood that public hunting was, is and should be. And it is precisely this form of hunting that the state should encourage. After all, what do private hunting users need? The rules of the game and that they do not change. They will decide everything else themselves: they will find the strength, means, investments.
Public hunting cannot afford this for a variety of reasons. And therefore the state is obliged to support it. I’m not sure whether our state did this. Over the course of six and a half years, I saw three deputy ministers, and each of them had his own attitude towards hunting, towards public use of hunting. Not everyone thought like me and shared my views.
— After your election, the Association entered into an agreement with the United Russia party on a strategic partnership. Was this not some kind of preventive step against the creation of a party of hunters, the idea of which was being discussed among hunters?
“None of the country’s state or political figures have ever had conversations with me about the creation of such a party. But I heard these conversations. I have never hidden the fact that Pekhtin and United Russia personally played a key role in my appearance in the Association.
I hoped that with such political support we would be able to solve the problems that existed in the industry, and above all in terms of changing legislation. But the decision-making system in the state is much more complex than my relationship with United Russia or with the leader of the faction.
A huge number of people participate in this system; sometimes it is even difficult to imagine how many of them are directly related to this.
In my opinion, we were able to do a lot. I still think that abolishing the Association’s hunting license is the wrong step. It would be possible to find some formula for interaction between the state and public organizations. But for some reason the officials did not want to look for her. But we were unable to defend our position.
Was the introduction of the state ticket a disaster for us? Most likely not, since those organizations that had the land actually worked with hunters, as they lived and still live. But in terms of status - yes!
Photo from the archive of Eduard Bendersky. |
— When you were faced with a cruel reality, did you have the feeling that you were simply “played”?
- No, no one played a prank on me. We are always in a state of problem solving. This is our job. She doesn't scare me. Any problem can be solved. I don’t want to exaggerate my role in the life of the Association, but today I think about what would have happened if I had not come there or if someone else had come. I’m not sure that the Association would even exist in the form in which it exists now.
The previous leadership was at a dead end. I don’t know whether they understood it or not, but where could these people lead the Association? At that time, the organization had neither adequate management, nor financial viability, nor normal contact with government agencies. I'm sure it would end badly.
— You became a founder of the Dikiy TV channel. Is this the same outlet for you as hunting?
— This is a pure business project. We entered into it with a cool mind. There is a certain risk in this. But we weigh the price of risk against our capabilities.
When thematic channels about hunting and fishing began to appear, I was outraged by the amount of foreign content that was shown there. Russia is a huge country, and we have to watch how Americans or Canadians hunt in America or Africa. It was then that the idea of creating a series of films about hunting in various regions of Russia was born.
Today I understand the economics of creating a television product. Purchasing foreign content is much cheaper than creating domestic content. But still, I am sure that we need to show our hunting and take care of our traditions.
— Are you sure that the TV channel has a good future?
— We are in a competitive environment, and that’s good. Let the viewer give his assessment, I like our product, we managed to form a very professional team.
— Are you tempted to return to Turkmenistan to hunt?
- It’s tempting, but there’s no hunting there now. They banned all foreign hunting. Today it is simply impossible to get into Turkmenistan. Very difficult visa regime.
— From the point of view of a private hunting user, are you satisfied with the legislative framework?
- I would say yes. We have no insoluble problems. We work absolutely normally under these rules, and I don’t see any serious restrictions.
10/03/2017 | Eduard Bendersky's dignity has been insulted and he does not want to be a poacher
Humiliated and insulted Edik Bendersky does not want to be called a poacher?
Andrey Shalygin: For me, captain 1st rank (colonel) in reserve, veteran military service(more than 25 years of service in the Navy, including the Main Staff as Deputy Chief of the Operations Directorate), Eduard Bendersky, who served as an officer for the FSB for a couple of years, better known to us as the odious head of the Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz, filed a lawsuit. Edik was probably offended by my preamble in the article “Eduard Bendersky wants to sell shooting Red Book sheep with the help of Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin,” published for the reprint about Bendersky’s letter to Khloponin.
It is not known that Bendersky, who suddenly ends up everywhere, did not have enough money for lawyers, or the ability to compete with Medusa herself. But he sued me, and not the article, which substantiated the allegedly hunting-corruption actions that Bendersky wanted to commit by turning to Khloponin with a letter granting an unscientific organization the rights to scientifically shoot Red Book sheep for an unscientific purpose in unscientific quantities. But he declares the damage not to his scientific reputation, but to his business reputation as much as 500,000 rubles. An undecided comrade knows how to shoot - he is for the purposes of science, but if they write that he is a poacher - so he is for the purposes of science. The duplicity is visible. A According to the official occupation of his Mountain Hunters Club, he is not a scientist, and even imagine, he is not a businessman, he is a provider of services to the elderly. What a cunning guy this Bendersky is - when exceptions are needed, he is a scientist, when money is needed, he is a businessman, when taxes are not needed, he is a philanthropist. It’s strange to even talk about some kind of business or other reputation of a given citizen.
That same letter from Bendersky to Khloponin, which many Russian scientists now directly call a typical example of hunting corruption (If Bendersky needs examples and scientists personally, you will have them in the process, Bendersky, and the dirty libels of Mazharov, who urgently pours slop on them from your pocket magazines with a ridiculous circulation, they will not be interfered with in this, on the contrary, you personally added to their desire to tell you everything personally, but where are you hiding behind your representatives in hipster jackets?)
I personally regard Bendersky’s actions in going to court as evidence of the extreme stupidity of citizen Bendersky (not the first in my observations of this person), I would even say some kind of critical stupidity, which probably lies beyond the bounds of common sense. Does he want something - justification, refutation? Refutation of what - my opinion about him? It is absolutely mine - that is what it is. Removing material? Well, we will expand it below and deploy it first as an official court document. Did he not know that this would happen? This is then extreme stupidity. Did he think that the colonel would not give an answer to the senior leader? In general, I find it difficult to assess his rationality.
When a person who completes “machine gun courses” in education and has not served, as they say, “to nowhere” (received the first regular assignment with a machine gun) makes a claim against someone who officially has the status of a veteran of military service, with the maximum officer rank - then only the senior staff (we have asterisks according to the numbers are the same as him, but they are different in size, an order of magnitude different, as is the number of stripes on the shoulder straps, and the positions in the ranks of the wage scale differ by several dozen) this, you see, already smells bad. At the same time, I seem to have two academies, but in total 7 (seven) higher educations and not one academic degree, and not even Russian. I have 10 times more medals than Bendersky served as an officer for years, you know, so in everyday life I wouldn’t even talk to this person about anything. But in court, yes, in court we will talk, this is the law, what can we do? As they say, he asked for it, so he will receive an answer.
Without citing the claim itself - its essence is already clear from the name, and you will read the contents of the subject below, I want to provide the attention of all interested people with an official document. This document contains my opinion regarding the claim of citizen Bendersky against me for the protection of honor and dignity (which I personally did not seem to notice, to be honest).
The document is completely official, it is called Response to the Statement of Claim of Citizen Bendersky, the process is civil, completely open, anyone has the right to attend it (the next hearing will be held on November 2, 2017 at 16.00 in the Tushinsky District Court, section 316 Judge Samokhvalova), therefore this official document, signed by me, was transferred to the court and handed to Bendersky, I have every right to publish it anywhere and hand it over to anyone (an official document, what will you do with it - prohibit me from having an opinion, or pull it out of the case file?), and no one can classify it under any court.
And now this document, for Bendersky’s information, will be stored FOREVER, and any citizen or department will have the opportunity, upon official request, to receive this document and provide it anywhere as a document. Before this, these were a few lines in a little-known reprint of the article. Bendersky, by filing a lawsuit, personally ensured that this became a detailed official document. And this is not the last such document in this process, I promise you.
Bendersky wanted to be indignant about a few lines of the announcement for someone else’s article, but first he would receive a 50-sheet document as the first chain letter, followed by all the others. And then there will be reports on the activities of the Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz, which we received back when Valery Kuzenkov was running and for the first time Madame Aramileva for the post of head of the Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz, the entire appointment of the latter to which, in the opinion of almost all experts known to me, was aimed at covering up the departure of Bendersky, so that Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz would allegedly The public organization did not have any complaints against the departing Bendersky, for which, in the opinion of all the hunting specialists I know, Aramileva immediately received a two-room apartment in Moscow, purchased at the expense of the organization.
Yes, we showed privately to the Prosecutor’s Office documents on RORS from the time of Bendersky and establishing indicators and agreements concluded during the entire first term of Aramileva’s leadership. The answer is simple - the elements of the crimes here can be seen from the mass of episodes, but the case must have a victim - until the participants declare themselves to be the injured party in the case, there will be no case, but how will Aramileva declare herself a victim from the start, having received housing in Moscow, having arrived from the Far East? Yes, and the grandfathers are far from retirement age, chairing legal entities that call themselves public organizations, they also want to continue to receive salaries and quotas for a comfortable old age, why should they declare that the organization’s budget has fallen tens of times, and the fixed assets created by the entire USSR were officially sold for kopecks and even transferred virtually free of charge to businessmen.
But more on that later, but for now it’s a rather long legal document on paper with 50 sheets; I just didn’t bother making it for the first document. There will be much more later, but for the first review 50 sheets are quite enough, you will agree.
Bendersky didn’t think it would be like this? Well, then my doubts about his mental abilities are very justified. Bendersky wants 500,000 rubles for his reputation. Purely in terms of concepts, it is not worth even a ruble from my point of view. But de jure, from a military pensioner, from whom even alimony does not have the right to collect more than 5,000 rubles, only the insane can demand 500,000, this is obvious.
I generally doubt the adequacy of Bendersky; he probably already thinks in terms of American courts or Thai courts, where his colleague and co-founder of the Mountain Hunters Club, citizen Melnikov, lives, who will also be discussed below.
Enjoy your acquaintance, you will find a lot of interesting things for yourself here. Further in the process there will be witnesses, experts, and new Opinions in the form of listing new facts. Bendersky wanted a trial - he will get it.
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Response to the claim of citizen Bendersky E.V.
In case No. 02-5930/2017
I, Shalygin A.G., being the Defendant in this case, object to the satisfaction of the Applicant’s claims in full on the following grounds:
Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation dated February 24, 2005 No. 3 “On judicial practice in cases of protecting the honor, dignity of citizens, as well as the business reputation of citizens and legal entities” explained that in accordance with Art. 152 of the Civil Code, the circumstances relevant to the case are: the fact that the defendant disseminated information about the plaintiff, the defamatory nature of this information and the inconsistency of its reality.
All documents enlarge when clicked
The material referred to by the Plaintiff, to which I wrote a preamble, and the article was published in copy with reference to the original source. It is worth saying that this material was published in dozens of sources, including the Greenpeace website, see Appendixes 2,3,4 articles in the media and Appendix 1 - the letter discussed in the articles.
The Plaintiff, without filing a claim against the Medusa resource, decided to sue me regarding the content of the preamble, attaching to the claim a linguistic conclusion drawn up either by people affiliated with the Plaintiff or interested.
In this claim by an individual, the court can consider exclusively the personal illegal hunting of Eduard Bendersky as defamatory information. Which I did not mention anywhere in my text. For all other episodes, the plaintiff is inappropriate.
1. The Plaintiff’s (Bendersky) intentions to commit crimes in the field of hunting are obvious and not hidden:
Medusa’s article to which my preamble is written talks about a real-life letter, see Appendix 1, from the Plaintiff to Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin, where the Plaintiff asks to allow hunting for RED BOOK, RARE, ENDANGERED, PROTECTED BY THE LAWS OF THE RF AND SUBJECTS, INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION, RED BOOK, ANIMALS, BYPASSING STATE PROCEDURE, ANTI-MONOPOLY AND ANTI-CORRUPTION LEGISLATION - WITHOUT A TENDER, WITHOUT AUCTION, WITHOUT COMPETITION, secretly, exclusively, and allegedly for scientific purposes, to his private club, without having any scientific status. If a different procedure for allocating resources is established by departments independently in contradiction with the laws of the Russian Federation, then it is illegal even if it exists (about which more later). It's as if he asked him to allow him to engage in prostitution, drug dealing and theft for a little while. This is prohibited. Absolutely and everyone. And if Bendersky was previously allowed to go wild, then this was also illegal.
Bendersky writes a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister asking him to allow him to repeatedly do something that is clearly a crime without special permission. The motivation for criminal intentions is characterized personally by Bendersky in a letter as “scientific shooting.” But this is a lie both de jure, because a commercial hunting club has no scientific authority or right to engage in such activities, and its leadership itself denies such a goal.
The executive director of his club, Alexander Gomonov, appointed by Bendersky (on behalf of this club, Bendersky writes a letter to Khloponin) in an interview did not hesitate to explain the “scientific shooting” absolutely exclusively by the commercial interest of Bendersky’s club, he stated that they wanted to shoot six, not five rams, but The club is ready to pay 30 million rubles for this. “We have many collectors, but they don’t, for example, in the collection of snow sheep horns from Putorana; they want." At the same time, Gomonov noted that the project “is not moving yet and is unlikely to move, because the country has one task - to prohibit,” Gomonov said. “They want” is not a scientific goal. Moreover, the “assessment of trophy qualities”, which is slipped in as a pseudoscientific goal, does not relate to any area of scientific activity officially registered in Russia.
At the same time, in Medusa’s article the following words of Gomonov are cited: “All of Africa lives on this: it sells for good money rare species, and then invests this money in [its] protection and reproduction. And for the first time, our club took the official route, and we are sure that poaching there [on the Putorana plateau] will continue to be the same,” Gomonov said. He noted that we are no longer talking about 15 million rubles to finance environmental programs, but about 30 million.
The official director of the mountain hunters club in the media refuted the “scientific shooting”, clearly indicating the commercial interest of collectors, that is, Bendersky is lying in his letter, trying to cover up making money with pseudoscientific goals. At a minimum, Bendersky maliciously misleads the Deputy Prime Minister if they do not agree on the result.
You should also pay attention to the fact that Gomonov claims that this is “the first time the club took the official route” and “poaching on the Putorana Plateau has always been and will continue to be.” It is logical to conclude that previously members of the club obtained their trophies there illegally and in a poaching manner, if this unrealized one is named first.
The plaintiff appeals to the Deputy Prime Minister with a request, bypassing existing procedures, laws, norms, rules, with multiple violations of current legislation - to allocate to him personally, without alternative, without any scientific basis - a commercial share of animals prohibited for production (no science considers 6 animals scientific shooting for any purpose).
But the Deputy Prime Minister is not authorized to violate all laws at once in the interests of an individual, bypassing state order - any permits, quotas and limits in the field of natural resources (including hunting resources) must be put up for competition, there are many people who will pay much more than Bendersky and his clients , even if someone allows a non-scientific organization to carry out scientific shooting, bypassing all laws. What does the Plaintiff count on by sending a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin asking for a crime?
Greenpeace Russia lawyer Mikhail Kreindlin officially informed the media that the government decree allowing the hunting of Red Book animals in some cases, although valid, is illegal. Note that prey. Not shooting. This is de jure critical.
High-profile cases of helicopter crashes of representatives of the President, governors, etc., precisely on such hunts in Altai, etc., hunts in which the Plaintiff specializes, indicate that the Plaintiff is counting on the likely commission of a crime in this area (committed many times before high-ranking officials), which will allow one to bypass existing prohibitions, since such a procedure is officially absent in the current legislation.
This is called intent to commit a crime, hunting corruption, - no one has such powers, bypassing competitions and tenders, to allocate Red Book animals for slaughter in commercial quantities, allegedly for scientific purposes, to a non-scientific organization. Bendery is not an institute, not a laboratory, not an animal rights activist - he is a seller of commercial hunting to foreigners. A national treasure trader asks for money to be allocated for the killing of healthy, rare animals, allegedly for scientific purposes, in violation of all existing rules.
The Plaintiff's intentions are clearly poaching and illegal - there is no such order in Russia that the Plaintiff, the Deputy Prime Minister, is asking for. The order requested by the Plaintiff contradicts the entire system of current legislation, just as the quantity does not fall into any section of science.
2. Propaganda of poaching in the activities of the Plaintiff and his club has been widespread for many years:
3. The linguistic “Specialist’s Opinion” attached to the claim cannot be recognized as an official qualified linguistic examination
The Plaintiff does not attach a Linguistic Expertise to the Claim, in contradiction with the current legislation, the Plaintiff attached a certain OPINION, which the author himself in the title called “Specialist Opinion” (which has no significance for the court, not being a forensic linguistic expertise). Moreover, in the first paragraph of the Conclusion it is stated that the Linguistic Conclusion was prepared in accordance with the request of E.V. Bendersky. and it was signed by an individual - Oksana Mikhailovna Grunchenko. That is as in the case of Khloponin, about whom the article writes, Bendersky personally asked a specific person for the favor.
The court can only consider official data from a forensic linguistic examination, free from the opinions of a single person who calls himself a specialist. Examinations of authorized persons who have an official license to carry out such activities, and not the opinions of arbitrary philologists who decided to make money.
This citizen does not have a license to conduct a forensic linguistic examination, even the form of drawing up the conclusion is not a form of forensic linguistic examination; according to the title, the author calls it a conclusion, but according to the text, a study, which indicates the legal illiteracy of the author, who is trying to present a legally formalized document, without having the basic knowledge for this.
In accordance with: K.I. Brinev Linguistic expertise: types of expert tasks and methodological presumptions // Jurislinguistics 9, p. 232-249 Baranov A. N. Linguistic examination of text: theory and practice: textbook. Benefit. - M., 2007. Brinev K.I. Theoretical linguistics and forensic linguistic examination, Barnaul, 2009. Issues of organizing forensic examinations in forensic units of internal affairs bodies Russian Federation: Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation dated June 29, 2005 No. 511 - Linguistic examination - a study of the products of speech activity, aimed at establishing significant facts and obtaining answers to the questions posed to the expert.
Linguistic examination allows us to establish the truth (falsity) or possibility (impossibility) of descriptive statements about an object. The production of linguistic expertise is based on linguistic theories and methods for studying linguistic objects developed in linguistics. Due to the fact that the practical need for a linguistic examination most often arises to establish legal facts during the consideration and resolution of court cases, in most cases the concept of “linguistic examination” is identical to the concept of “forensic linguistic examination”.
The conclusion as a document can be drawn up exclusively - based on the results of a linguistic examination (and we observe the presence of a conclusion without observing the examination itself, instead of which we are offered an unauthorized Conclusion of a single uncertified specialist, based on his personal research with references to articles by unknown people twenty years ago). At the same time, even the examination does not have predetermined force and is assessed by the court, investigator, or investigative body on the basis of its internal conviction, along with other evidence in the case.
Materials of the Linguistic Conclusion attached by the Plaintiff:
1. They contradict themselves (the final conclusions do not consist of intermediate ones), the cited excerpts from regulations are refuted by the text of the “research”.
2. Contradict the current legislation (“The specialist” does not use normative terminology at all such as “illegal hunting”, “obvious fact”, and refers to private newspaper and magazine articles in his argumentation).
3. In the argumentation and even in the definition of basic terms, they refer to little-known publications of unauthorized people that do not have any legal force and are not even an official linguistic procedure, including those published before 2000.
4. Contain conclusions that contradict the text of the conclusion itself.
5. They are silent about existing legal norms and word forms that contradict the conclusions of the conclusion (completely ignores and does not even provide the definition of basic concepts, the words Hunting, Poacher in the original meaning, Illegal hunting, independently interprets the concept Opinion, etc.).
On the basis of which the materials of an unofficial linguistic conclusion arbitrarily compiled by an unauthorized person cannot be accepted by the court as an argument at all. How can one talk about Hunting and Illegal Hunting without giving them a linguistic definition? How can one not indicate the original meaning (translation) of the word Poacher, building the entire conclusion on it, how can one interpret the concept of Opinion based on articles from magazines.
In accordance with the Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation dated February 24, 2005 No. 3 “On judicial practice in cases of protecting the honor and dignity of citizens” “ Untrue information are statements about facts or events that did not take place in reality at the time to which the disputed information relates" " Under damaging information for the purposes of linguistic research, negative information is understood exclusively in the form of statements about the facts of violation by the subject of the norms of current legislation.” The plaintiff’s “specialist” does not mention the norms of legislation at all in his conclusion.
All the information I have provided is completely true, but is it defamatory in nature, or is it simply a statement of facts from the activities of the Plaintiff and his co-founders in the Mountain Hunters Club - that’s another question.
4. The journalist’s opinion is not subject to jurisdiction and is not subject to correction at the request of third parties, while the Plaintiff and his linguist arbitrarily interpret the subject and object of the claim, creating pseudo-argumentation.
The Basic Law of the Russian Federation states: Article 29 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation 1. Everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech. ... 3. No one can be forced to express or renounce their opinions and beliefs. 4. Everyone has the right to freely seek, receive, transmit, produce and disseminate information in any legal way. The list of information constituting a state secret is determined by federal law. 5. Freedom of the media is guaranteed. Censorship is prohibited.
An opinion is not a statement and is free from restrictions in its presentation and publication. A violation by a subject of legal norms is indicated exclusively by the wording of the relevant Laws and by-laws, codes, etc., that is, the violation should be called as it is specified in the articles of the Criminal Code, Civil Code, AK, etc., in this case it is “Illegal hunting.” There is no other definition for this type of violation of the law.
In order for the information to be considered defamatory in the context of the claim of an individual Plaintiff, I would have to publish an unequivocal explicit statement about Eduard Bendersky personally conducting “illegal hunting”, which, in accordance with the Law on Hunting, is an activity related to the search, tracking, pursuit of hunting resources , their extraction, primary processing and transportation, complete:
a) causing major damage;
b) using mechanical vehicle or aircraft, explosives, gases or other methods of mass destruction of birds and animals;
c) in relation to birds and animals, hunting of which is completely prohibited;
d) in a specially protected natural area or in a zone of environmental disaster or in a zone of environmental emergency (Article 258 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The term “illegal hunting” is not contained in my commentary at all. But.
POINT B) Article 258 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation certainly understands illegal hunting as hunting for birds and animals, the hunting of which is completely prohibited, which includes species included in the Red Book, and special permits from Rosprirodnadzor for hunting (they are issued not for shooting, but specifically for production, which must be carried out only by trapping).
If this were not so, then point B) in this article would not exist at all, because for all species for which hunting is prohibited a special shooting permit can be issued, so point B) cannot be attributed to any type of animal at all in the interpretation of “completely " This would be legal nonsense. And since there is a clause in the Law, it means the concept “fully” understands the officially established general procedure, according to which the issuance of permits to HUNT Red Book animals is ILLEGAL, therefore permits can only be issued for CATCHING and nothing else.
From here the very fact of issuing permits for “Extraction” may take place for scientific purposes, but extraction is not Hunting, namely CATCHING, and nothing else. That is, all the permissions previously received by Bendersky and Melnikov to harvest species included in the Red Book could only be implemented through Trapping; they also destroyed these animals, carrying out Hunting, which is certainly prohibited by Article 258 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
In the text of my commentary, there is no mention anywhere of illegal hunting being carried out personally by the individual who filed the claim - Eduard Bendersky, that is, illegal search, tracking, pursuit of hunting resources, their extraction, primary processing and transportation. I don’t mention anywhere any of Eduard Bendersky’s personal hunts, either from the bad or the good side.
If Eduard Bendersky wants to file a claim not as an individual, but as a legal entity and talk about the activities of the companies he heads and the companies in which he is a participant or former leader, then he must file a claim from the relevant legal entity. But in relation to a claim by an individual, discussions about the activities of legal entities cannot be conducted with an improper plaintiff.
The linguistic conclusion attached by the plaintiff does not contain any references to the norms of the current legislation and is completely and unjustifiably categorically based on the footnotes indicated in it on brochures and random articles that have no legal force and no linguistic significance. Generally recognized dictionaries and current legal definitions are completely ignored, and even the only meaning of the main definition is completely absent from the conclusion of this “specialist”.
The conclusion of the so-called specialist completely contradicts the entire system of encyclopedic linguistic and dictionary sources, distorting the concepts of opinion and statement, not knowing at all what the term “poaching” means, and discussing it specifically.
In the course of my text, I express my personal opinion, to which I have every right, and in which I have full conviction, based on my 30 years of experience as a hunter and excellent knowledge of the issue under consideration, both on the basis of personal data and from facts known to me from the words of hundreds of other hunters, from the media, as well as personnel of companies that the Plaintiff heads or participates in as a founder or participant.
The definition of “Opinion” given by the “specialist” linguist of the Plaintiff completely contradicts the fundamental works on linguistics:
Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary- OPINION, I, cf. A judgment expressing an assessment of something, an attitude towards someone, a view of something.
Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary- OPINION, A look at anything, a judgment about anything, expressed in words.
Encyclopedia of Sociology- OPINION English opinion; German Meinung. 1. A judgment regarding some object, including a subjective assessment.
Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science- OPINION is an expression of an idea about any fragment of reality that does not have a sufficiently complete and reliable justification. M. is most often based on a one-sided, unsystematized perception of an event or idea.
Large psychological dictionary- OPINION - (English belief) a description of problems or phenomena, proposed as possible, and its evidence for others within the framework of accepted norms (for knowledge) is absent or is not considered exhaustive. (B. N. Enikeev.)
At the same time, the “specialist” himself in the linguistic conclusion indicates the following on the facts:
Page 10 Conclusions - Allegedly, a specialist saw in my text a hidden statement about the Plaintiff’s participation in poaching hunts. BUT there is no wording here in illegal, and the crime called poaching does not exist. The existing type of crime is not mentioned here, the current legal norm is not mentioned. A hidden statement does not qualify as an overt significant fact.
Page 11 - There is allegedly a hidden statement about the detention of accomplices of those detained with poaching trophies. Accomplices do not have a valid legal status, this is common parlance, poaching trophies are referred to in the text to them, and not to the Plaintiff. It also does not mention the existing type of crime, does not mention the current legal norm, and it does not specifically talk about the Plaintiff. The hidden statement here does not fit the status of an obvious significant fact.
There, on page 11, the “specialist” gives his own definition of “poaching”, which is not fixed anywhere, based on the text of some unknown dictionary from 1999. This definition has nothing to do with jurisprudence.
Large Encyclopedic Dictionary - POACHING - (from the French braconnier poacher; originally a canine hunter) the extraction or destruction of wild animals in violation of the rules of hunting, fishing and other requirements of legislation on the protection of wildlife.
POACHING from the French braconnier - poacher; original meaning - canine hunter. Note that the “specialist” of the Plaintiff, while giving 4 definitions of poaching (without indicating any significant source), never provided the only existing translation of the word from the original French, which indicates the very low qualifications of the “specialist” as a linguist. At a minimum, this “specialist” is not competent in this matter; when considering the term, she does not give its only meaning in the original source.
Hunting with dogs in the lands of the latifundists in France was prohibited for peasants, just as now in many countries hunting with dogs is generally prohibited. Therefore, hunters with dogs in general and in France in particular were generally called poachers in the context of understanding as people with an undesirable status and methods of hunting that were inappropriate for this hunt. Thus, in the original meaning of this word - a Poacher in a hunt is initially a Persona non grata, who has no place here on this hunt and in this place either by rank or by the means he uses.
The term poacher is not used in Russian legislation , as a crime in laws and regulations, the term “illegal hunting”, “illegal production and trafficking “maintenance, acquisition, storage, transportation, forwarding and sale” (Article 258.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) or “violation of hunting rules” (Article 8.37) is used Administrative Code). I DO NOT USE ANY SUCH TERM ANYWHERE IN THE TEXT OF MY COMMENTARY ON THE ARTICLE.
Even if you were allowed to shoot a Red Book animal, bypassing the established procedure for everyone, enshrined in current legislation. This violates the existing order, this is not provided for by the Hunting Rules and the Hunting Law, it falls under Article 258 of the Criminal Code, paragraph B.
For me, this is poaching in any case, and I have the right to understand and interpret non-legal terms in accordance with my opinion about them, based on knowledge of their true meaning, and not in connection with how someone wants based on ignorance of the subject .
Therefore, any reference to the word poacher that I use should be understood in its real original meaning, and not in the one that those who do not know what this term means at all want to give it. Why did the Plaintiff’s specialist keep silent about the only meaning of the word “poacher”; could she not have known about it? Excluded - since this meaning is disclosed in all major dictionaries. Could the Plaintiff’s “specialist” not know that there is no such legal norm and crime called “poaching”? If this term constitutes the main content of the work paid by the Plaintiff to the “specialist”, and this is excluded. It remains to conclude that the “specialist” is interested and deliberately distorts the facts and conclusions.
Are Bendersky and his foreign clients desirable hunters when shooting Red Book animals? Of course not.
Is it legal to shoot Red Book animals? No.
Is it legal to allocate quotas for killing rare animals to individuals from a private club without tender? No.
Is there a procedure for circumventing antitrust laws in Russia? No.
Does Bendersky want to participate in the existing procedure for allocating quotas for the murder of Red Books? There is no such procedure officially.
Is Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin a person authorized to break laws or in charge of quotas for shooting Red Book animals? No, but he supervises the Ministry of Natural Resources and can influence the result using indirect pressure to “recommend”, “advise”... Then this corruption lobbying.
Is Bendersky the head of a scientific organization conducting scientific work? No.
Does the number of Red Data Bookers exceed the established norms? No.
Is there a danger to human life? No.
Can prohibited resources be allocated for scientific purposes to an organization not engaged in scientific activities? No.
This means that Bendersky, no matter how the situation turns, cannot have the right to shoot.
Therefore, Bendersky’s entire letter is nothing more than a request for corrupt, illegal, poaching activities, for violation of all Laws, for permission to commit crimes, several at once.
Moreover, even if we take as a basis the definition of the “specialist” linguist of the Plaintiff, then “a poacher is a person engaged in hunting... in violation of established prohibitions.” Are there bans on the extraction of Red Book items for everyone? Yes. Is hunting for Red Book animals hunting in violation of established prohibitions? Yes, definitely and unequivocally.
Scientific shooting cannot be permitted to a private commercial club. If Bendersky was repeatedly allowed to do something, it was done in violation of current legislation. And he got used to the fact that everything is possible for him, hiding behind the “recommendations” of his personal acquaintances.
Does the Plaintiff know about this, does he act intelligently, maliciously creating the situation “WHAT IS THE LAW”? Of course. He headed the Russian Hunting and Fishing Union for 5 years, and it was during this period that loud falls of “servants of the people”, the representative of the president and the governor, from helicopters while illegally hunting these very Red Book animals took place.
5. The specialist’s conclusion attached to the claim contains only two phrases in my text defined by the linguist as an “explicit statement”, and both of them are not associated at all with the sole subject Bendersky as an individual, but in both cases with phrases where Bendersky is mentioned in a pair with the former deputy of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, citizen Melnikov, (pages 13-14 of the Conclusion) in both turns.
Being informed about the activities of all the major professional hunters included in the world TOP lists, I knew in advance that the Canadian-American Jimmy Shockey was once again (late February-early March 2016) going to Melnikov in the Irkutsk region for a poaching hunt (episodes with the participation of Shockey during Melnikov’s invitation to him to Russia was a lot (they met with Bendersky several times, discussing hunts in which Shockey participated with the assistance of Bendersky), but on at the moment I don’t have any documentary evidence of the fact of poaching by Shockey, who used the services of the KGO, at my disposal, although I know about such facts for certain, including from guides and local outfitters, and not only from the example of Shockey.
Having personally warned Jimmy Shockey that during this period the hunting of a rare species of musk deer, musk deer, and in March lynx and wolverine, is illegal (Shockey told in advance on social networks what he was flying to Irkutsk to hunt) I began documenting message feeds and photographs on social networks, great knowing where, to whom and why Shockey is flying on a poaching hunt, who answered me that the party that invited him has all the issues resolved on the spot and this is not the first time he has done this.
Having documented the facts of poaching of lynx, wolverine, and rare musk deer, I sent three letters to the Governor of the Irkutsk region demanding the involvement of Profi-Hunt Melnikov, which did not hesitate to publish the results of the poaching hunt on its website. In response, I received replies twice (since Melnikov himself previously headed this very service and was subsequently its head from the ministry).
6. Bendersky’s activities in shooting Red Book animals are not limited to various types of hunting tours and propaganda with bonuses for the destruction of animals. Bendersky consistently pursues a policy of constant pressure on government bodies and individual officials, which this time resulted in a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Previously, dozens of such letters were sent to many heads of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the minister, regional ministries, and with the creation of a deliberately false argument (as the director of the KGO Gomonov put it - “what’s wrong with knocking a couple of sheep”). For many years they have been trying to “knock” not only sheep and goats, but also other animals listed in the Red Book.
The Bendersky Mountain Hunters Club is not limited to mountain goats and sheep. Bendersky always and everywhere acts in the interests of his business partner and co-founder Melnikov. What relation can the Mountain Hunters Club have to sika deer and the Himalayan bear - formally nothing, but in fact Bendersky independently, and also using his appointment, who took the post of head of the Russian Hunting and Fishing Union after his departure - constantly writes letters with pseudo-argumentation to the Ministry of Natural Resources and other departments about the need to generally EXCLUDE FROM THE RED BOOK those commercially profitable trophies for which he has a demand from foreign hunters (the anti-scientific nature of Bendersky’s premises and false arguments has been repeatedly confirmed by a variety of specialists, if necessary, I can present a dozen conclusions, but then I will give only one for now). Appendix 8
Bendersky, as in the case of the age of male Red Book rams, here too is systematically and maliciously engaged in fictitious pseudo-arguments sent to ministries and departments about the need to withdraw from the Red Book(not including, not recognizing as a rare species, not introducing a ban on hunting, etc.): Himalayan bear, Caucasian chamois, Caucasian red deer, Siberian ibex, Bezoar goat, Bighorn sheep (including Putorana), Reindeer, Gray goose, Bean Geese of three subspecies, Swan-Klokutna, etc.
Acting in the interests of foreign hunters, Bendersky, using his connections and Melnikov’s connections, is constantly trying to push through the spring hunt for ibex when they descend lower, so that it is easier for the foreign hunter to climb the mountains (but the spring reproductive period is twice poaching). Letters from Bendersky and Aramileva (the current head of the Russian Hunting and Fishing Union) to the Ministry of Natural Resources with a request to remove the Himalayan bear and sika deer, parts of anseriformes, etc. from the Red Book are almost identical in form and content, they consist of copy-paste fragments rearranged in order, which suggests that these people act in collusion.
At the same time, the entire scientific community opposes this position. , namely, letters are sent to the Ministry of Natural Resources denouncing Bendersky’s position, signed by: Zheleznov-Chukotsky N.K., Doctor of Biological Sciences, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Academician Petrovskoy Academy St. Petersburg, Head of the Working Group on the Study and Protection of Large Predators at the Russian State University of Moscow Agricultural Academy named after. K.A. Timiryazeva, Yudin V.G. (Senior Researcher, Institute of Biology and Soil Science, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.), member of the Working Group; Zaitsev V.A. (senior researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPEE), Ph.D.), member of the Working Group; Khramtsov V. (Honored Worker of the Hunting Industry); Prysyazhnyuk V. (head of the laboratory of the All-Russian Research Institute of Nature Conservation, Ph.D.); Salkina G. (Senior Researcher, Lazovsky Nature Reserve, Ph.D.); Tkachenko K. (senior researcher at the Institute of Water and Environmental Problems, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.), member of the Working Group; Kolchin S.A. (Researcher at the Institute of Water and Environmental Problems, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.), member of the Working Group; Oleynikov A. (researcher at the Institute of Water and Environmental Problems, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.), member of the Working Group; Pokrovskaya Liya (MSU named after M.V. Lomonosov, Ph.D.), member of the Working Group, conclusion of the director of the Khabarovsk Institute of Water and Environmental Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences B.A. Voronov, conclusion of the directorate of the Lazovsky Nature Reserve and the Call of the Tiger National Park, Doctor of Biol. Sciences: Danilov P.I., Kudaktin A.N., Pazhetnov V.S., Pikunov D.G., Tumanov I.L., candidates of biology. Sciences: Belikov S.E., Makarova O.A., Tirronen K.F. and so on - their opinions and appeals (which are available in a copy and in my possession) can be testified by an expert in this matter who conducted an examination of Bendersky’s Request. If necessary, I can present to the court the conclusions of ALL of these specialists, which clearly indicate that Bendersky’s requests (on deer, Himalayan bears, sheep, and so on) are completely unscientific and have an anti-natural orientation.
Bendersky bombards government agencies with pseudoscientific arguments for selfish purposes in the hope that at the next moment some deputy prime minister will come up with a resolution to provide assistance, a weak minister will write, consider and work on it, and Rosprirodnadzor will agree with the pseudo-argumentation of the reserve which wants money for snowmobiles and ATVs to ride tourists - and all together they will sell the national wealth, with the help of Bendersky, to a visiting foreigner, who himself will soon die. Everyone will put something in their pocket, and to Bendersky’s joy, the appearance of the animal may disappear altogether, and he will be left with a skull. These people have no shame, no conscience, no principles. The Benderskys must be stopped everywhere and in everything, and in the most severe way, otherwise the whole of Russia can be sold.
7. Bendersky’s cover up of selfish goals with some kind of scientific shooting is an absolute lie, which was established by an independent examination.
The circumstances and legality of Bendersky’s request for permission to hunt Red Book animals and the so-called “pilot project” of the reserve (completely illegal and unscientific, as it turned out) were subjected to an independent examination by specialists from the high level, with a worldwide reputation (if necessary, this expert is ready to appear in court on behalf of the Defendant and answer all questions), as a result of which it is clearly established that Bendery and the reserve, which decided to make money, are maliciously misleading government agencies for selfish purposes.
CONCLUSION of the examination author - Zheleznov-Chukotsky N.K., Doctor of Biological Sciences, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Academician of the Petrovsky Academy St. Petersburg, Head of the Working Group on the Study and Protection of Large Predators at the Russian State University of Moscow Agricultural Academy named after. K.A. Timiryazev. Appendix 9.
It should be noted that, unlike Bendersky, who served as a senior lieutenant for a couple of years and graduated from the Russian State Academy of Agrarian University in 5 months, as well as a certain philologist who performed a certain linguistic conclusion for him, the author of the Expertise on the Putorana Ram, Academician Zheleznov-Chukotsky, is a world-famous, recognized scientist Cambridge Biographical International Science Center "International Scholar of the Year 2002".
And this famous scientist notes that in the pilot project of the Reserve and Bendersky’s application on behalf of the KGO, “scientific goals” are clearly and completely unscientifically stated - “It is planned to shoot 6 male Red Book bighorn sheep aged 10+ years or more with one very strange purpose - study of trophy qualities of Putorana males bighorn sheep. The statement in paragraph 5 states that “Heads with horns (horn sheaths) from hunted animals come into the possession of the Mountain Hunting Development Fund “Mountain Hunters Club” and will be used by it as a trophy at its own discretion. You can get acquainted with the trophy qualities of Putorana bighorn sheep in the book of records of hunting trophies, which contains data on 5 specimens.”
The scientific goal of studying trophy qualities does not exist in science. Moreover, not only shooting, but also catching these animals is categorically unacceptable, and the alleged absence of a role for males over 10 years old is a fiction with malicious intent.
The expert directly notes that the applicants repeatedly lie about the lack of research of the species, about the timing of catching, about the places of catching, about the role of males older than 10 years - they lie on all counts, trying to create a pseudoscientific justification for the hunt they need and nothing more “The statement states: the Putorana bighorn sheep is a poorly studied subspecies of bighorn sheep, which is completely false. To refute this statement, I counted and reviewed about 20 scientific articles by different authors on its study, starting in 1966, which presented a lot of information on distribution, abundance, demographic, sex and age structure, nutrition, social behavior, gregariousness and even molting . The authors of the program and pilot project from three organizations - one of them is a scientific academic institute (IPEE RAS) - took upon themselves, according to the project and program, supposedly a pioneering role in studying the ecology of Putorana snow sheep, while ignoring and throwing out of their memory the studies of previous scientists who worked in these difficult and inaccessible places.
The authors write “... the current level of knowledge about the Putorana bighorn sheep is low, so it is necessary to implement a real program to study the Putorana subspecies of bighorn sheep within its range.” And in other documents, the authors indicate that they will study and in the territories adjacent to the reserve.
The dates for shooting elite individuals to study the trophy qualities of the horns are set from April 20 to November 1. This will in no way contribute to the livelihoods of the animals, especially since bighorn sheep are very sensitive to this kind of influence, especially before calving. It is pregnant females at this time (from April to mid-May) who are in common herds with other females with last year’s offspring, males up to 2 years old, but without adult males, which can lead to undesirable and irreparable consequences during the catching period (from 20 April to November 01), since there is no guarantee in the early stages to distinguish pregnant females from non-pregnant females without the experience of researchers. If a danger is detected that the shooter will pose, the entire herd may rush to the rocks, then pregnant females may abort from stress. The female leaves the general herd 3-5 days before the birth of the lamb, which occurs in the first ten days of June.
The role of males aged 10 years or more in preserving social organization in the behavior and livelihoods of common herds of bighorn sheep is very great, which is especially important in the pre-winter and winter period s. It is the male leaders, based on the experience gained after the snow falls and the end of the rut, who know the mosaic structure of the location of winter pastures close to the habitats, which are poor in the composition of forage plants, and the united herds they lead unmistakably follow to the feeding places. In the life of bighorn sheep, winter is the most extreme period for foraging. Disruption of this structure due to the shooting of older male leaders will undoubtedly lead to the death of the herds.
All taken together, the ecological features of such difficult living conditions for bighorn sheep on the Putorana Plateau definitely indicate the categorical inadmissibility of shooting and trapping elite males, especially since the total population of Putorana bighorn sheep is only 800 individuals.
This conclusion was sent to the Office of Rosprirodnadzor for the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Rosprirodnadzor.
The examination has clearly established the complete absence of a scientific component in Bendersky’s activities - this is simply trade in Red Book animals falsely covered up by scientific goals that are absent in science in principle - there is no such science in Russia that studies the trophy qualities of Red Book animals. This is fiction with malicious intent.
Moreover, such actions are absolutely illegal:
8. HARVESTING IS NOT SHOOTING, HARVESTING OF RED DISTRIBUTORS IS PERMITTED BY LAWS ONLY BY CATCHING (which in relation to the Putorana sheep is also categorically inapplicable).
The issuance of any permits for the hunting of Red Book animals by SHOOTING, and especially in the reserve to non-scientific official organizations, is ILLEGAL, regardless of whether such a permit was issued or not, because the licensing procedure of departments is not the basis for the repeal of regulations of the highest jurisdiction.
THE ISSUED PERMISSION FOR EXTRACTION ALLOWS ONLY TRAPPING, BUT NOT KILLING LEADING TO THE DEATH OF THE ANIMAL. Even with such permits, such shooting is unconditionally poaching, and according to the law, illegal hunting, because it is carried out in VIOLATION OF THE LAW. Departments do not have the right to violate laws and their rights are to allow only TRAPPING, including at the level of regulatory law.
According to Bendersky’s letter, both on the merits and on the legality of his receipt of permits previously and in the future, (Appendix 10) from the Advisor to the President of Russia on environmental issues, to which a response was received. Appendix 11 - Response from the Ministry of Natural Resources on behalf of the Department of State Policy and Regulation in the Sphere of Environmental Protection to a letter from a Greenpeace lawyer about Bendersky’s appeal to Khloponin to prevent the future issuance of such permits and refusal both the Bendery and Putorana reserves in such activities.
Moreover, in the response of I. Davydov (Deputy Director of the Department of State Policy in the Field of Environmental Protection) to the rationale set out below, a response was given in which he promised that in connection with the following, as well as in connection with the high public outcry, the issuance of such permits to Bendersky, including the implementation of a certain “pilot project” for the reserve, will be denied this time and in the future. At the same time, even for real scientific purposes, non-lethal methods of capturing animals will be found if such a need arises.
The regulatory framework for justifying the illegality (illegality of hunting Red Book animals even with permits) of issuing permits to commercial clubs, including for scientific shooting:
In accordance with the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” (Article 60, paragraph 1), in order to protect and record rare and endangered plants, animals and other organisms, the Red Book of the Russian Federation and the Red Books of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are established. Plants, animals and other organisms belonging to species listed in the Red Books are everywhere subject to withdrawal from economic use.
Activities leading to a reduction in the numbers of these plants, animals and other organisms and deteriorating their habitat are prohibited.
In accordance with the Federal Law “On Wildlife” (Article 24), actions that could lead to death, reduction in numbers or disruption of the habitat of wildlife objects listed in the Red Books are not allowed. Legal entities and citizens carrying out economic activities in the territories and waters where animals listed in the Red Books live are responsible for the conservation and reproduction of these wildlife objects in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and the legislation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
Thus, federal legislation directly prohibits any actions that could lead to the death or reduction in the number of wildlife objects listed in the Red Book.
Since the harvesting of Putorana mountain sheep will inevitably lead to its death, such actions are a violation of the Federal Laws “On Environmental Protection” and “On Wildlife”.
In addition, according to the Federal Law “On Hunting and on the Conservation of Hunting Resources, and on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” (clause 4 of Article 11), the hunting of mammals and birds listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation and (or) Red Data Books of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, with the exception of the capture of mammals and birds for the purposes provided for in Articles 15 and 17 of this Federal Law.
Thus, shooting of mammals listed in the Red Books is prohibited.
According to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 01/06/1997 No. 13 (as amended on 06/05/2013) “On approval of the Rules for obtaining objects of the animal world belonging to species listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, with the exception of aquatic biological resources”:
2. Mining objects of the animal world belonging to species listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, with the exception of aquatic biological resources (hereinafter referred to as objects of the animal world), permitted in exceptional cases for the purposes of conservation of wildlife, monitoring the state of their populations, regulating their numbers, protecting public health, eliminating threats to human life, protecting agricultural and other domestic animals from mass diseases, ensuring the traditional needs of indigenous peoples.
From the relationship of these norms it follows that the hunting of mammals listed in the Red Book may be allowed in exceptional cases in order to monitor the state of their populations by catching (without shooting).
In accordance with the Administrative Regulations of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources for the provision of public services for issuing permits for the extraction of objects of flora and fauna listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, approved by Order of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia dated February 18, 2013 No. 60 (Registered with the Ministry of Justice of Russia on June 25 .2013 No. 28880) (clause 33): the main criteria when making decisions by the Commission is the compliance of the stated goals of harvesting with the goals of harvesting such species, as well as non-damage to the natural population of the species and its habitat in the case of harvesting of flora and fauna in volumes specified in the application.
Harvesting fauna objects listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, with the exception of aquatic biological resources, is permitted in exceptional cases in order to preserve fauna objects, monitor the state of their populations, regulate their numbers, protect public health, eliminate threats to human life, and protect from mass diseases of agricultural and other domestic animals, ensuring the traditional needs of indigenous peoples.
Thus, Rosprirodnadzor, in the event of receiving an application for a permit to harvest Putorana bighorn sheep by shooting (as well as other Red Book animals), must refuse to issue this permit as illegal due to the inconsistency of the method of harvesting (catching but not shooting), and the inconsistency of the purposes of the harvest - Collecting antlers and capturing commercial trophies is not a scientific activity, and commercial hunters do not have licenses for scientific activities, nor do they have official status.
All of the above is well understood by ANY reader and hunter, and Bendersky is considered a complete poacher by almost all hunters, journalists, and editors of hunting and especially scientific magazines I know., telling me on his own behalf dozens of other facts, including about Bendersky’s personal illegal hunting. Yes, many of these facts are undocumented, but I have no reason not to trust honest people. As an example, I will give only one comment posted by a reader under the article about Bendersky’s letter - Appendix 12.
9. Regarding the amount of certain damages requested by the plaintiff, it should be noted that this material, being only a copy-paste of Medusa’s article, did not receive any wide publicity and popularity due to the fact that I wrote a short preamble to the article.
Without a doubt, the Plaintiff decided to choose me rather than Medusa as the Defendant because he considered not this, but previous and future materials, undesirable for himself, and the goal was more accessible.
As for the site www.NExplorer.ru, this is an unregistered media outlet that is not a legal entity, and I am not in an official position there for which I would be paid money, no one is paid money there at all for work, it is for the most part a public resource. Therefore, the amount of some damage claimed by the Plaintiff is absurd, inadequate to anything even virtual, and is a means of judicial pressure and persecution on the part of the Plaintiff.
I am a military pensioner, captain 1st rank (colonel), veteran of military service, my pension is 20,000 rubles, I have not officially worked anywhere for many years. My son has long been a captain of the 3rd rank (major) and grandchildren go to school.
The plaintiff knows all this very well because he himself is a senior lieutenant who served for a couple of years as an officer (dismissed early) and even graduated from RGAZU in 5 months. With such an education, he should know that even alimony, if there were any, by law cannot be withheld from me in an amount of more than 5,000 rubles, including transfer costs.
It should be noted that there is a reaction from readers to the material, and it is quite unambiguous. At the same time, people understand perfectly well that Bendersky’s statements about shooting 12 year old rams are a lie (By the way, the IP address shows that the review is from Chita, where Melnikov and Bendersky are well known - Appendix 12).
As far as we understand, this greeting to Bendersky came from Chita, our reader was not convinced by Bendersky’s tales about scientific shooting
Based on all of the above, I ask the court to dismiss the Plaintiff on all counts of the claim, since:
Sincerely, Andrey Shalygin - signed personally
02.10.2017
___________________________________
P.S. Those who wish to provide me with any information regarding the activities of citizens Bendersky and Melnikov can contact me through the contact form on the website, the comment form at the bottom of the article, and also by email [email protected]
When this material was typed up, we received another confirmation of the long-established opinion in the scientific community that the Red Book would simply be sold off in the near future, having created a specially incompetent and interested commission for this purpose.
Judge for yourself, this is the order of Minister Donskoy dated August 31, 2017, which, according to scientists did in order to remove valuables from the Red Book hunting species and give them to hunting companies. Madame Aramileva, who is mentioned in the text above several times, also became a member of the commission. By the way, her letters to Donskoy are practically a mirror copy of Bendersky’s letters (if anyone wants to show this, I will certainly make a special article in which the coordinated actions of writing joint letters by citizens Bendersky, Aramileva, Valtsman, and several other non-comrades of us are written as under carbon copy, just with the paragraphs rearranged.
Read. Now the fate of the Red Book sheep will be decided by citizen Fokin, a physician by training, citizen Sorokin, an ornithologist from the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Ecology. Aramileva, who had already written letters with Bendersky about the withdrawal and non-inclusion of 13 species of animals in the Red Book.... Rosprirodnadzor sent a letter to them for conclusion
The Moscow “Mountain Hunters Club,” headed by former FSB special forces soldier Eduard Bendersky, in the summer of 2017 tried to obtain permission to shoot five or six Putorana bighorn sheep in Siberia.
The animals are especially protected and are included in the Red Book. Over the past thirty years, not a single such trophy has been officially recorded among Russian hunters, and many of them dream of adding rare horns to their collection.
So far, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology has refused to issue permission to shoot Red Book sheep. The club called this a provocation of foreign funds. The club includes a former deputy minister of natural resources and the owner of a hunting company that organized illegal hunts for an American hunter-TV presenter.
“Legal hunting for it is prohibited, except for those cases specified in the legislation (shooting for scientific purposes and others). It was in this way that animals were obtained, five of which were included in the SCI Book of Records (American trophy rating system. - Author). During the 90s of the last century, 18 official hunts for Putorana sheep were held. Among those published by the SCI Book of Records there are no trophies registered to Russian hunters,” says posts on the website of the Mountain Hunters Club.
We are talking about a subspecies of bighorn sheep from the Putorana plateau, located in the north-west of the Central Siberian Plateau. Their population does not exceed 800 individuals. It is included in the Red Book, which means their shooting is prohibited under the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” and “On Wildlife”.
In July 2017, it became known: the “Mountain Hunters Club” is going to hunt bighorn sheep in the federal state budgetary institution “Taimyr Nature Reserve” in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The VIP hunters turned to Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Alexander Khloponin for support.
In a letter, the head of the club, Eduard Bendersky, noted: the harvest of Putorana snow sheep is necessary in scientific interests for a comprehensive study of this species. The “research” was planned to be carried out from 2017 to 2019.
The “Mountain Hunters Club” hoped in the future, in “cooperation” with the Ministry of Natural Resources, to obtain permission to hunt other Red Book specimens
— Altai argali (threatened with extinction), bezoar goat, Kodar and Chukchi bighorn sheep. The head of the club, Eduard Bendersky, said this at the end of the letter.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin instructed the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to develop a “pilot project for interaction,” Meduza reported. Khloponin's press secretary Natalya Platonova explained to the publication that it was not about shooting, only about a “pilot project” and “scientific research.”
“The whole of Africa lives on this: it sells a rare species for good money, and then invests this money in [its] protection and reproduction. And for the first time, our club took the official route, but poaching, we are sure, there [on the Putorana Plateau] will continue to be the same. We have many collectors, but they do not, for example, in the collection of snow sheep horns from Putorana; they want,” said the club’s executive director Alexander Gomonov.
After the hunters received a refusal from the Ministry of Natural Resources, a response publication appeared on the website of the Mountain Hunters Club entitled “How the little-known online publication Meduza, registered in Latvia, hopes to deprive the Putorana Nature Reserve of real funding.” The author of the article came to the conclusion: “Medusa” and “Greenpeace”, financed from a foreign fund, “are going to fight to difficult situation with the protection of Putorana sheep has not changed for the better.”
The “Mountain Hunters Club”, of course, knew about the problems with the protection of sheep, so the idea of financial assistance to the Putoransky Nature Reserve was received with enthusiasm, and as a result, a project was developed, according to which the reserve would be allocated a significant amount that would help carry out counting numbers, and establishing animal protection. Almost 30,000,000 rubles is such a large amount of money that only a hypocrite would be able to call it a “hunting fee,” the club representative is indignant (the author’s punctuation has been preserved).
Who is in the club?
The Mountain Hunters Club Foundation was registered in Moscow in 2015. The foundation has various goals - the development of mountain hunting, the provision of social services to the elderly and disabled in the field of livestock farming, publishing and scientific activity.
The fund was headed by one of the founders, Eduard Bendersky, a former employee of the Vympel special forces group (now part of the Russian FSB), who served from 1991 to 1994. He is also a member of the Vympel charity organization. The veteran of special forces is also listed as a co-owner of the non-profit partnership for nature conservation and hunting development National delegation CIC.
Among the founders of the fund is Artem Molchanov, president of HMS Group JSC (has assets in Belarus, Ukraine and Germany), engaged in mechanical engineering and oil and gas equipment. This list also includes the founder of the Karo Film cinema chain, a member of the board of directors of a subsidiary of Rostec, Oleg Andreev. He is also a co-owner of the Safari Hunting Club.
One of the owners of the fund is State Duma deputy from the United Russia party Vladislav Reznik. He prefers to hunt in mountainous areas: “In Mongolia he caught Gobi argali and ibex, in Kamchatka - Kolyma, Kamchatka and Koryak sheep. I reached the Pamirs and Tien Shan for the Marco Polo ram (in Russia it is in the Red Book. - Author).” Before hunting tours, he trains at his estate in the Smolensk region, where, according to him, he built himself a “sniper paradise.” There, his family owns plots of land with a total area of 1.3 million square meters. m. There is also the hunting farm of Alexander Reznik’s son, Krinitsy LLC, where in 2012 118 bison, valuable for trophy hunting, were brought from Denmark.
Deputy Vladislav Reznik
Another founder of the Mountain Hunters Club Foundation was the former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources of Russia (since 2010) and owner of the hunting company ProfiHunt (Profi Hunt LLC was created in 2008) Vladimir Melnikov. He was also director of the Department of Hunting at the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. His father Vladislav Melnikov was a game scientist in Irkutsk, an Honored Scientist of Russia.
Red Book trophy for an American friend
Jim Shockey in a black cowboy hat posing against the backdrop of a stuffed bighorn sheep he caught in Russia. Canadian hunter Jim Shockey is a famous showman, host of American programs about hunting and companion of Vladimir Melnikov’s ProfiHunt. With the help of Shockey the company advertises Russian hunting for foreigners.
Jim Shockey’s programs are somewhat reminiscent of the Russian program “In the Animal World,” only with a sad ending. He travels all over the world and gets rare trophies. The hunters are trying to keep up with him. Cooperates with companies selling equipment and equipment, as well as with organizers of hunting tours.
Over the past three years, Jim Shockey has participated in Russian hunting 12 times. Posts with reports are published on personal pages on social networks. However, the Canadian does not talk about his Russian outfitters (professional hunting organizers). But the Russian company ProfiHunt, associated with the Mountain Hunters Club, reports on its website: we organized all of its Russian hunts.
On American hunting forums you can find information that Jim Shockey has been coming to Russia for promotional hunts since 2010. This was reported by a hunter under the nickname Express, who encountered a Canadian star in Kamchatka. The forum participant, like many foreigners, went for traditional Russian hunting. I used the services of ProfiHunt and was dissatisfied. Everything that was happening reminded him of how in Africa they shoot animals in cars. IN Russian version there was a snowmobile and brown bear. After the hunt, the American was still unable to fly home and exchanged angry messages with ProfiHunt.
Jim Shockey’s large-scale tour of Russian forests and mountains began at the end of 2015, on which outfitter ProfiHunt congratulated him. At the beginning of 2016, he went on a tour of Siberia, visiting the Irkutsk region for musk deer (a deer-like animal), lynx and wolverine. After hunter-blogger MrShalygin (Andrey Shalygin) discovered, that the hunt for musk deer is not carried out within the time limits required by law.
In the Red Book of Russia, musk deer is listed as an endangered species, but it can be hunted, and only during a limited period. According to the government website of the Irkutsk region, the musk deer hunting season ran from November 1 to December 31, 2015. Jim Shockey arrived in Irkutsk at the beginning of March 2016 and shot a musk deer on March 9th. The chronology of events is easy to reconstruct from the photo reports that the American made during the hunt. Here he is on photos with caught red book musk deer. On the other photos it is clear that he was accompanied by Gennady Kislov, the state inspector of the department for the protection and use of wildlife and their habitats in the village of Zhigalovo (this is where the hunt took place).
Blogger Shalygin is sure: Shokey knew that this was a poaching hunt. All responsibility for paperwork lies with ProfiHunt. Andrey Shalygin wrote about the violations to the government of the Irkutsk region and regulatory authorities.
Neither the organizers from the Mountain Hunters Club nor the foreign hunter were brought to justice.