Both for work and for hunting: only good things are remembered about the suddenly deceased senator-hunter

Member of the Federation Council from the Nizhny Novgorod region died in sponsored lands

On Thursday, Senator from the Nizhny Novgorod region Vladimir Lebedev, former deputy governor of the same region, and before that, deputy minister of natural resources and head of the Federal Forestry Agency, died suddenly. The regional governor, Gleb Nikitin, announced the tragic news on his social networks, and we asked his comrades about the deceased – outside of work, Vladimir was a keen hunter.

The governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, expressing condolences to Lebedev’s family and friends through his Telegram channel, wrote: “Very young. I just had my 60th anniversary. Energetic. We met and discussed plans the other day.”

In the official field, Lebedev has represented the Nizhny Novgorod region in the upper house of the Russian parliament since September 2014. In the Federation Council, he worked as first deputy chairman of the committee on agrarian and food policy and environmental management.

– Just three months ago he came to our editorial office! – recalls the editor-in-chief of Okhotnichya Gazeta, part of the Moskovsky Komsomolets media holding, Alexander Lisitsyn. – Vladimir Albertovich and our Pavel Nikolaevich Gusev held a video conference on the topic: is hunting an atavism today? They are both avid hunters. And the topic turned out to be so interesting to Internet users that they answered questions for several hours in a row.

Fellow hunters say that more than anything else, Vladimir loved the forest and hunting, and also his sponsored Nizhny Novgorod region. There he graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University in 1987. Vladimir’s specialty is a radio engineer, but since mid-2012 he fell “into nature” (became Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation), and fell in love with it. A year later he became the head of Rosleskhoz (Federal Forestry Agency of Russia), and he happily devoted his free time to hunting in permitted areas. In the hunting community they say that Vladimir Albertovich died during the hunt: he was riding on a “quad” (quad bike) in the company of other hunters, at some point he fell behind, his comrades returned, but he was not breathing. The preliminary cause is the detachment of a blood clot. But experienced hunters say that one can only envy such care: only the best of people pass instantly and painlessly into a better world.

“Vladimir was in his region,” says Andrei Aleksandrovich Filatov, director of the Department of State Policy and Regulation in the field of hunting, who communicated with Lebedev both at work and at hunting. – A decent, modest person with a good sense of humor. And I would even say selfless. Vladimir helped ordinary hunters a lot, they don’t even know how many problems at the legislative level he saved them from. He was a very enthusiastic person, only 61 years old, turning in April. I envy the team in which Vladimir hunted; the Federation Council has a very close-knit hunting team.

– Is it true that the tragedy occurred while hunting?

– I know that Vladimir was in his sponsored area. But I haven’t heard about hunting. I was informed that doctors would determine the exact cause of death, but the preliminary cause was a heart attack.

– Does hunting generally contribute to human health or vice versa? They say that hunters stand on the numbers for hours without even moving.

– Vladimir, like many responsible people today, has exorbitant work loads. And hunting is, of course, a kind of sport in the fresh air, in nature, but the load is also prohibitive. Vladimir was a healthy man, but his heart ached for Russia – like all of us.