It takes a particular breed of person — someone rich, bored and lacking in any moral compass — to glory in the killing of defenceless animals for pleasure. Sergey Yastrzhembsky, a former spokesman for President Putin of Russia, is exactly the type, most recently posting a photo of himself with a bighorn sheep he shot in the Rocky Mountains in Montana in January.
Hunters pay tens of thousands of pounds to shoot and pose with the bodies of their wildlife kills, seemingly indifferent to the public outrage and revulsion their actions provoke. It is not just a matter of individuals behaving badly; hunters often club together with their rich friends to help preserve their so-called sport.
As The Times reports today, Yastrzhembsky belongs to
