You are reading too much in what I said. Of course weird things are happening in an unstable dictatorship like Russia and this guy might have been assassinated for one reason or another. That does not mean it is not nice to give people context about the culture in that end of the world though.
I think you make it sound more exotic than it is. People pick mushrooms around the world. Slightly more common in SE-Europe, a bit less so than a few decades ago. People tend to stick to the 1-2 species they know best, poisonings are extremely rare.
Fair point, but I am surprised to hear that. My US friends (New England) have been extremely surprised when they hear that foraging for mushrooms is common where I come from (on the rare occasions when this comes up).
It is also pretty common in parts of the US. They probably don't know about that either. I know people who go morel hunting every spring in the midwest (Iowa and Illinois, specifically).