A member of the Orenburg regional assembly has appealed to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to have animal rights activists deemed “extremist”, local news website 56orb.ru said Sunday.
Ivan Kochugurov, who represents the Communist Party in the Orenburg region, near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, accused animal rights activists of publicly calling for people to break the law, insulting their opponents and saying that some children who had been attacked by dogs had been to blame for their own deaths.
The politician also called for “animal extremism” and “animal terrorism” to be listed as crimes in Russia’s criminal code, though he didn’t expound on his proposal.
New legislation that mandated the putting down of stray dogs that have not been claimed or rehoused after 11 days in an animal shelter came into force in the Orenburg region on 1 July. However, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that the killing of stray animals should only be used as “an exceptional measure” and in cases where strays pose a direct threat to humans.
Last July Vladimir Putin signed a law that devolved powers to regional governments to establish their own rules on how stray animals should be treated, including how measures such as euthanasia could be used.
The new law prompted a number of Russian regions, including Orenburg, to tackle their stray dog problems by ordering culls of the animals instead of sterilising, vaccinating and releasing them, despite strong pushback from animal rights activists.