Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which the authorities of the Russian regions will be able to independently decide how to control the number of homeless animals. The document is published on the official portal of legal acts.
Amendments made to the law «On Responsible Treatment of Animals» come into force from the day of publication. Animal rights activists called the initiative proposed by the deputies «the law on euthanasia.»
The authors of the bill themselves said that it was aimed at «protecting people from attacks» by stray dogs. At the same time, during the discussion of innovations, they proposed to allow «humane killing of animals, in addition to cases established by federal law.»
After the State Duma, according to parliamentarians, received about 25,000 appeals from citizens against the amendments, «the profile committee recommended rejecting the introduced initiatives offering euthanasia.» Despite this, the version of the amendments signed by the president retained the wording: “measures in the implementation of activities for the treatment of animals without owners.”
In addition, the law prohibits “the free, uncontrolled movement of an animal outside the places permitted by the decision of the local government for walking animals.”
After the bill was adopted by the State Duma on July 12, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, advocated the euthanasia of stray dogs and added that it awaits stray dogs animals that will not be taken from the shelter. Representative of the Alliance for Animal Defenders Yuri Koretskikh called the move to find owners for dogs in shelters «nothing more than a formality.» pan class=»mz-publish-context-cite__text_meta»>ArticleDog eyes rolled. Why they want to replace “responsible treatment of animals” with murder in Russia