"Stay out of the woods to avoid accidents": An Emergency Situations Ministry employee in Krasnoyarsk Krai was forced to resign.
Persecution Gennady Bitinsh began after he filmed an illegally killed roe deer in the forest in early December 2025. According to Bitinsh, one of the poachers was the son of a district inspector from the State Hunting Inspectorate. Vladimir Mikheev Oleg Mikheev.
Bitinsh assumed that Mikheev Sr. had organized the illegal hunt for his son. Furthermore, he had tried to persuade an emergency services officer to sign a report stating that the deer's carcass showed no injuries.
However, no one was held accountable for the animal's killing: the number of witnesses dropped from four to one, and the number of killed roe deer dropped from three to two. However, in February, Bitins began receiving threats of dismissal and violence.
"At first, they [threatened] through people. Then they weren't shy anymore—one person even sent an audio recording telling us not to go into the forest again, otherwise there would be an accident. Up until that point," says Bitinsh. "Now they've started hitting me at work. They even somehow dragged me into politics, even though the case was about a state game inspector."
His resignation from the Ministry of Emergency Situations has already been submitted. However, Bitinsh will continue to try to prove the truth to the very end.
Video: Gennady Bitinsh