Wannabee toff

[Polina Prigozhina competed in international equestrian events despite her father being under sanctions ©Molfar]

I read in today's FT, at reference 1, that one of the daughters of the boss of the Wagner private army, the chap who used to sell hot dogs from a cart before moving onto restaurants and other bigger things, is very into show jumping - one of the chosen sports of young blue bloods in this country - not doubt also in most of the other countries of western Europe - and the children of tech billionaires in the US.

I wonder if the not-so-newly-arrived members of the club invite her to their parties? Or does she have to throw her own, lavishly funded, parties to get a hand hold on this particular greasy pole? Lashings of more or less illegal caviar?

PS 1: 'Molfar' seems to be a Ukrainian word, but, unusually, neither Bing nor Google turn up a photographer using this name. Photographers who appear in the FT are usually quite easy to find.

PS 2: I seem to recall from the Thubron book about the Amur, reading about poaching huge Amur sturgeon from the estuary, aided and abetted by the local river police. Even Putin's Russia does protected species. See reference 2.

PS 3: and while I am on, I share a diagram from the pig book noticed at references 3 and 4. A reminder from the Argentine of what we have done to the shape of pigs in our drive to get more meat out of them. In the olden days, wild boars were shoulder heavy animals, with deep chests providing plenty of room for heart and lungs. While the pigs of today are much heavier, hip heavy animals. Do they have more heart and lung flavoured problems in consequence? Or maybe they rarely live long enough for such problems to show? And again, while I am on, Davidson gives a lot of space to the apparently important and difficult matter of how best to house pigs, from where I associate to the phase in family life, perhaps forty years ago now, when quality time was given to the construction of pig houses out of brightly coloured wooden bricks, Lego and suchlike materials, houses which sometimes grew to cover a considerable patch of carpet.

References

Reference 1: Horses, art and private jets: the charmed life of Russian warlord’s family: Western governments have struggled to impose costs on relatives of the Wagner founder, even though they have been heavily involved in his businesses - Miles Johnson, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-trip-along-amur.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/return-to-chandos.html.

Reference 4: The production and marketing of pigs - H R Davidson - 1953.