Society and animal welfare - Russia
Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's former mayor, stated in May of 2008 that he was supporting humane policies towards the regulation of the number of homeless animals.
However, reality proved that the verbal statement entailed no action: animals would be captured in the streets and sent to unfinished shelters, where they would die because of poor housing conditions.
The same year, Luzhkov's deputy Pavel Biryukov offered to replace the program of sterilization of homeless animals to their extermination in municipal shelters. The black list included quarantined and sterilized dogs. Animal rights activists said that such a change in the law would only legalize animal slaughter.
Many in Russia believe that a large number of homeless animals is a result of uncontrollable breeding of purebred dogs and cats and the absence of propaganda to sterilize homeless pets. In addition, taking homeless pets from dog pounds is not considered a traditional practice in Russia.
There is direct connection between the cultural and moral level of the society and the attention that it pays to issues of protection of animals. The culture of eating dog meat has been prospering in Moscow lately. A journalistic investigation conducted by one of Russian TV channels revealed a whole chain of restaurants serving dog meat in the south-west of Moscow.
The attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to four-legged creatures is terrible too. On October 27, 2007, a priest of Russia's iconic Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius ordered to pack over 30 cats in sacks and take them to a landfill where they were bulldozed.
During the festival of balloons held in Moscow's Tushino in 2008, several lambs were publicly slaughtered for meat. The festival was conducted with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
In 2007, a priest of the Temple of St. Matrona in Moscow's center ordered a security guard to beat a puppy who ran onto the territory of the church. The guard broke the puppy's spine.
Animal rights activists and Russian celebrities had been pressuring the city to abandon the plan, which they said would endanger the dogs by placing them in an environment where diseases would run rampant. Some had compared the planned facility to a concentration camp for dogs.
Natalya Yunitsyna, head of The Hope Bringers charity, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the deportation proposal was now off the city's agenda.
"We're very pleased that we've won a small victory here," she said.
Moscow city government was expected to endorse the plan Tuesday but the session's minutes, posted online, do not mention the proposal.
The mayor's press office was unavailable for comment, and city hall officials would not confirm the report.
The Russian capital has an estimated 26,000 stray dogs, some smart enough to ride escalators and trains on the subway and others who intimidate or attack humans.
The controversial plan would have gotten rid of the dogs by sending them to a camp in the Yaroslavl region, some 150 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of the city. But activists staged a campaign to oppose the deportation, collecting nearly 2,000 signatures of prominent artists and musicians against the plan.
Moscow has spent some 1.3 billion rubles ($45 million) on dog shelters, sterilization, and other programs to deal with the city's stray population between 2008 and 2009, but critics say much of the money has gone unaccounted for.
The next thing activists will be demanding is an independent body to advise city hall on dealing with strays, Yunitsyna said. Activists will also push for taxes and oversight over dog breeders, who they believe to be "a key source of new strays," and promote more sterilization among Russian pets. Source
The best Times articles are often the non-news features about some weird practice going on out in the world somewhere that has no bearing whatsoever on life as we know it. Russian dog fighting; lots of crazy, bloody details that show what a bizarre place Russia is these days.
The sport involves massive, thick-headed breeds, including Central Asian shepherd dogs and Caucasian ovcharka, bred by livestock herders across the continent to defend sheep and cattle in the mountains and on the steppe. Collectively the dogs are called volkodavs, the wolf-killers.
While most of the day's more than 10 matches drew little blood, this one was different. Jack and Sarbai tore each other's mouths with the first bites. Blood flowed, staining the dogs' faces and flanks.
Between Sarbai and Jack's rounds, other dogs fought. One was called Koba, the nickname used by Stalin. He won.
Another was named Khattab, after a Jordanian-born terrorist who fought in Afghanistan, He won, too, in the junior middleweight class, extending his undefeated record to eight wins.
Each fight lasts until one dog shows fear or pain — by dropping its tail, squeaking, whimpering, refusing to fight or snapping its jaws defensively, all grounds for instant disqualification. There is no scoring. There are only winners and losers or, in fights that continue for three rounds without an animal yielding, draws.
Many dogfights in Russia are said to be tainted, with steroid-swelled dogs, or animals smeared with wolf fat to confuse or intimidate their foes, or dogs' mouths injected with Novocain to make them fight without hesitation. Source
However, reality proved that the verbal statement entailed no action: animals would be captured in the streets and sent to unfinished shelters, where they would die because of poor housing conditions.
The same year, Luzhkov's deputy Pavel Biryukov offered to replace the program of sterilization of homeless animals to their extermination in municipal shelters. The black list included quarantined and sterilized dogs. Animal rights activists said that such a change in the law would only legalize animal slaughter.
Many in Russia believe that a large number of homeless animals is a result of uncontrollable breeding of purebred dogs and cats and the absence of propaganda to sterilize homeless pets. In addition, taking homeless pets from dog pounds is not considered a traditional practice in Russia.
There is direct connection between the cultural and moral level of the society and the attention that it pays to issues of protection of animals. The culture of eating dog meat has been prospering in Moscow lately. A journalistic investigation conducted by one of Russian TV channels revealed a whole chain of restaurants serving dog meat in the south-west of Moscow.
The attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to four-legged creatures is terrible too. On October 27, 2007, a priest of Russia's iconic Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius ordered to pack over 30 cats in sacks and take them to a landfill where they were bulldozed.
During the festival of balloons held in Moscow's Tushino in 2008, several lambs were publicly slaughtered for meat. The festival was conducted with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
In 2007, a priest of the Temple of St. Matrona in Moscow's center ordered a security guard to beat a puppy who ran onto the territory of the church. The guard broke the puppy's spine.
Animal rights activists and Russian celebrities had been pressuring the city to abandon the plan, which they said would endanger the dogs by placing them in an environment where diseases would run rampant. Some had compared the planned facility to a concentration camp for dogs.
Natalya Yunitsyna, head of The Hope Bringers charity, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the deportation proposal was now off the city's agenda.
"We're very pleased that we've won a small victory here," she said.
Moscow city government was expected to endorse the plan Tuesday but the session's minutes, posted online, do not mention the proposal.
The mayor's press office was unavailable for comment, and city hall officials would not confirm the report.
The Russian capital has an estimated 26,000 stray dogs, some smart enough to ride escalators and trains on the subway and others who intimidate or attack humans.
The controversial plan would have gotten rid of the dogs by sending them to a camp in the Yaroslavl region, some 150 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of the city. But activists staged a campaign to oppose the deportation, collecting nearly 2,000 signatures of prominent artists and musicians against the plan.
Moscow has spent some 1.3 billion rubles ($45 million) on dog shelters, sterilization, and other programs to deal with the city's stray population between 2008 and 2009, but critics say much of the money has gone unaccounted for.
The next thing activists will be demanding is an independent body to advise city hall on dealing with strays, Yunitsyna said. Activists will also push for taxes and oversight over dog breeders, who they believe to be "a key source of new strays," and promote more sterilization among Russian pets. Source
The best Times articles are often the non-news features about some weird practice going on out in the world somewhere that has no bearing whatsoever on life as we know it. Russian dog fighting; lots of crazy, bloody details that show what a bizarre place Russia is these days.
The sport involves massive, thick-headed breeds, including Central Asian shepherd dogs and Caucasian ovcharka, bred by livestock herders across the continent to defend sheep and cattle in the mountains and on the steppe. Collectively the dogs are called volkodavs, the wolf-killers.
While most of the day's more than 10 matches drew little blood, this one was different. Jack and Sarbai tore each other's mouths with the first bites. Blood flowed, staining the dogs' faces and flanks.
Between Sarbai and Jack's rounds, other dogs fought. One was called Koba, the nickname used by Stalin. He won.
Another was named Khattab, after a Jordanian-born terrorist who fought in Afghanistan, He won, too, in the junior middleweight class, extending his undefeated record to eight wins.
Each fight lasts until one dog shows fear or pain — by dropping its tail, squeaking, whimpering, refusing to fight or snapping its jaws defensively, all grounds for instant disqualification. There is no scoring. There are only winners and losers or, in fights that continue for three rounds without an animal yielding, draws.
Many dogfights in Russia are said to be tainted, with steroid-swelled dogs, or animals smeared with wolf fat to confuse or intimidate their foes, or dogs' mouths injected with Novocain to make them fight without hesitation. Source