Tell President Putin to appoint the Animal Welfare Commissioner to protect animal rights in Russia

Dear Mr. President!

Every day many acts of cruelty to animals happen in our country. Only volunteers take care of dogs and cats getting in trouble. They do everything they can to help animals.

Every day compassionate people see horrible illustrations of the human cruelty – they find animals burnt to death, dogs and cats dying of poison, animals without tails, paws or eyes. Sometimes people found animals that were beheaded, kittens or puppies were ripped up and much more… The dog-hunters or psychopaths kill dogs. Cats and birds die from the poison, too. In winter sadists like to throw cold water on poor animals and they freeze to death. Unfortunately, children kill animals, too. They just copy the behavior of adults, but choose different methods of murders.

Psychologists and criminalists have proved the connection between the immoral behavior in childhood and aggressive behavior in adult. Cruelty to animals is one of signs of the psychopathy. The profilers confirm that 86% of teenagers, who had a crime history with murders, committed crimes to animals before. The specialists assure that this type of crime is one of the 5 main indications, that the offender will commit violence to people.

Nowadays it’s necessary to crackdown on crime to animals in Russia. We think, the government could take strong measures for except further motives to commit violence to citizens or to animals. It is inadmissible to consider that the cruelty to animals is just an administrative offence. This is a crime! More than is needed to increase penalties for killing animals and all actions as provided in Article 245 of Criminal Code of Russian Federation.

Many animals are dying or suffering pain in every part of the country right now.

Unfortunately, the main way to control in stray dogs and cats number is capture and next slaughter. We have some huge problems within this scope:

1) very few state shelters.
In 2015 the bills of completion of works (capturing dogs and cats, keeping then mercy killing) amounted from 200 euro to 1 561 000 euro per year.
One shelter for 100 dogs and 200 cats spends about 15'000-20'000 euro.
How many shelters could be built for more than 1,5 million euro?
Is killing easier that caring? Of course! And this is a very paying business. No more!

2) embezzlement of resources allotted to capture and keeping before killing.
In Far East some puppies ate grass, glass and wood, because there was no money for dog food in shelter. All money was stolen. The lack of local government control leads to blooming illegal business on animals condemned to death.

3) careless work of people performing contracts to capture and destruction.
For example, the animal control staff sells captured dogs to volunteers, who want to save nice and healthy stray dogs from the mercy killing. In 2015 the price was 5000 rubles (about 100 euro). It’s expensive for volunteers that spend all their money on dog food and vet care.
Sometimes people, who performing contracts, sell poor dogs to underground Chinese or Korean restaurants. They have many different ways to get sordid gains.

So, there is a bloody business on most unprotected and defenseless inhabitants in Russia.

Mr. President!

We demand to STOP MASS KILLING cats and dogs in Russia and prohibit it in law! Also, we ask you to make tougher the penalties for all actions as provided in Article 245 of Criminal Code. Please, don’t let killers get away with their crimes!

We – citizens of Russian Federation and the international community – propose to make state shelters for stray animals in every town and elaborating the state program of animal welfare. It helps dogs and cats to save their lives, provide them veterinary care (included sterilization and vaccination), socialization and then – adoption to families.

The wild animals in Russia need to be safe and protected, too. Many of them are killed by poachers. The conservation officers cannot protect rare species from extinction. We remember cruel accidents with wild animals – 2 bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncates) was abandoned by people in a silo pit in Krasnodar region, tigress Crystal was a toy in the casino in Primorye or the polar bear was killed on Wrangel Island in December… In this month on Kamchatka fishermen sawed off the snout of the LIVE sea-lion! They also took pictures and video...

How long will it last?

Mr. President, we ask you to  enact the law protecting animal rights. We also ask you to appoint the Commissioner for Animal Welfare for supporting wild and domestic animals and protecting their rights.  We are fully confident that the appointment of a Commissioner for Animal Welfare is a great step to push further the importance of animal welfare.

The Commissioner could promote and advocate for animal welfare and the highest standards of health, keeping and treatment of animals; promote educational campaigns and social dialogue on issues relating to animal welfare. Among other functions, the Commissioner could investigate animal cruelty cases, either out of his own motion or following a complaint received by him.

We believe, this situation should be changed and we could popularize the positive and humane attitude to animals in Russian society.