More and more Russian regions are introducing rules that allow stray animals to be euthanized if no owner claims them or if officials classify them as aggressive. According to the group Egorov and Partners, by the beginning of 2026 such laws were already in force in 33 regions, while similar proposals were still under consideration elsewhere.
One of the first regions to adopt such rules was Buryatia in November 2023. After that, Ulan-Ude nurse Nargiza Muminova began rescuing dogs from the former municipal holding shelter Ananda. When contracts under the previous catch-neuter-vaccinate-release system were terminated, she bought the shelter and, together with volunteers, urgently started relocating the animals. Within two months, homes were found for 600 dogs in different Russian cities.
Ananda now houses 1,860 dogs, and monthly expenses reach three million rubles. Muminova says that even sterilizing about 1,000 animals a year with support from the Brigitte Bardot Foundation does not solve the problem while people continue abandoning pets on the street.
“No one works with the public. Animals keep ending up on the streets. It is human irresponsibility,” Nargiza Muminova says.
Sergey Egorov, a Novosibirsk lawyer and former investigator, has been fighting regional euthanasia rules in court since 2023. In 2024 he tried to challenge the Buryatia law in the Constitutional Court, but the court did not overturn the measure and allowed animals to be killed in an “extraordinary situation,” in the event of disease risks, an attack on a person, or “unmotivated aggression.”
At the same time, in August 2024 the Supreme Court of Buryatia barred the euthanasia of unclaimed animals if they were neither dangerous nor sick. In early February 2026, the Supreme Court of Tyva struck down a provision requiring dogs that had not found owners within 14 days to be euthanized.
Egorov argues that mass killing does not make the streets safer. He cites Kyzyl, where 1,500 dogs were killed in 2025 under an “extraordinary situation” regime, while the number of bites, he says, remained roughly unchanged at about 1,100 cases over the period from 2023 to 2025.