For the manslaughter of the Kamchatka oligarch was punished with a nine-month restriction of freedom

“Hunting is worse than bondage,” says folk wisdom. Everyone understands its meaning differently. According to, for example, the portal Pravoslavie.Ru, the point is that “desires – unreasonable or sinful – captivate us more than slavery.” It seems that the same Christian view of things was adopted by the Kamchatka judge, who considered the case of local oligarch and ex-deputy Igor Redkin, who was accused of causing death by negligence and illegal hunting. And he did not aggravate the suffering of the billionaire.

By a court verdict, the former deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Kamchatka Territory “was sentenced to restriction of freedom for a period of 1 year, taking into account the measure of restraint in the form of house arrest, the rest of the restriction of freedom was 9 months,” the website of the Investigative Department of the ICR for the Kamchatka Territory reports.

Redkin will serve his term in the same place where he was under arrest – in his mansion in the regional capital. Although, in principle, he can “go” in any other place convenient for him within the city district. The restrictions imposed by the verdict consist in a ban on leaving Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky without the permission of the penitentiary inspectorate. With permission, you can.

This is about punishment. Now for the crime. The hunting drama played out a year ago – August 2, 2021. Evening, which is important for understanding what happened, sometimes. First, Redkin, as established by the investigation and the court, “without a permit for the extraction of hunting resources … shot one individual of a brown bear using a carbine.” Later, the hunt moved to the landfill area of ​​​​the village of Ozernovsky – the worst thing happened there.

“Through the hatch of the vehicle, using a carbine with a thermal imaging sight, he discovered a likely target for destruction, displayed as a bright dot on a dark background,” says the Kamchatka department of the TFR. “In his opinion, she had a visual resemblance to a brown bear specimen.

Without ruling out the possibility of shooting at a person, he fired at least three aimed shots into the landfill area at an indistinct target. As a result, one of the bullets hit a 30-year-old local resident, who at that moment was at a distance of about 274 meters from the shooter and was busy collecting scrap metal. The man died from a gunshot wound in a medical facility of the municipal district.

That is, one cannot even say that Redkin confused a man with a beast. In fact, he fired blindly. And he shot while in the village. He shot without bothering to make sure that the “bright dot on a dark background” was a beast, not a man.

In contrast, former State Duma deputy Valery Rashkin, who claimed that he mistook an elk for a wild boar, at least saw for sure that the creature he was firing at did not belong to the human race.

By the way, Rashkin also received an “unrealistic”, but still more serious punishment: three years of probation. For the murder, we recall, not a man, but an elk.

No, we admit, there are mitigating circumstances in the Redkin case: surrender, payment of substantial compensation for moral damage to the family of the deceased … But there is also an aggravating one, which, however, was not taken into account by the investigation and the court for some reason. “It is important that at the time of the commission of the crimes Redkin I.V. was in a state of alcoholic intoxication,” State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein writes in his appeal to the Prosecutor General.

Khinshtein asks the Prosecutor General to check the case materials and “consider the possibility of appealing the verdict in connection with its unreasonable leniency, as well as the incorrect qualification of the crime.”

In general, there is reason to believe that the story did not end there. But at the same time, we can say with confidence that the series of strange decisions of the Russian Themis will also continue.

Many attempts have been made to find the key to understanding the logic of our judicial machine. For example, the telegram channel “Equality. Media”, having analyzed judicial statistics for the past 2021, found that our most humane courts show the greatest humanism towards the defendants associated with the authorities: “Although 63% of officials were tried under grave and especially grave articles ( among all persons – 29%), they were: 12 times more likely to be acquitted (2.6% vs. 0.21%); more likely to dismiss cases (28% vs. 22%); more often recognized negligence (7% vs. 2%); less often deprived of liberty (15% versus 28%)”.

Of course, this pattern does not explain all the mysterious verdicts. For example, the same billionaire Redkin cannot be attributed to the bureaucratic class. However, it is quite possible to rank him in the category of “powerful of this world” – citizens who do not always have power in the administrative sense, but who have such connections and influence that they can hunt anywhere and for anyone. Absolutely no fear of bondage.