Activist Aleksandr Anisimov was detained outside Putin’s administration while reciting poetry by Sergei Yesenin during the submission of appeals by animal rights activists. SOTAvision reported this.
During the day, the man began reading the poem “To Kachalov’s Dog”, after which security officers approached him and took him to a police station. There, officers filed a report against Anisimov under the article on “petty hooliganism”, claiming he had used profanity in a public place. At the station, he was fined 500 rubles.
“I wanted to express my opinion about amendments to the law that allow cruelty to animals <…> As a sign of solidarity with the people who came there, I decided to support them somehow and read a Yesenin poem. Then I was detained. They told me: ‘Citizen, come with us. What are you doing here? Why are you shouting here?’ But I wasn’t shouting, I was reading. They simply took me to the vehicle, and that was it.”
Animal rights activists are demanding that the State Duma dissolve the working group led by Nina Ostanina, which initiated the law on the euthanasia of stray animals.
They are also asking for the closure in Russia of so-called “sleeping rooms”, specially designated areas in shelters where, as Mediazona notes, animals are killed under the pretext of extraordinary situations.