In order to keep stray dogs from wandering into an Olympic event or bothering any of Sochi's new visitors, authorities have employed a company to catch and kill them, the Associated Press reported.
Thousands of stray dogs have been living amid the mud and rubble of Olympic construction sites, roaming the streets and snowy mountainsides, and begging for scraps of food.
Alexei Sorokin, director general of pest control firm Basya Services, told the AP that his company had a contract to exterminate the animals throughout the Olympics, which open Friday.
According to the AP, Sorokin refused to specify how the dogs would be killed or say where they would take the carcasses, while claiming that his company was involved in the "catching and disposing" of dogs.
Numerous problems are being caused by the dogs such as "biting children," Sorokin said on Monday.
He said he was stunned last week when he attended a rehearsal for the opening ceremony and saw a stray dog walking in on the performers, the AP reported.
"A dog ran into the Fisht Stadium, we took it away," he said. "God forbid something like this happens at the actual opening ceremony. This will be a disgrace for the whole country."
Since food and shelter are provided by workers near construction sites, strays tend to gather over there. "Dogs have even been able to get inside the Olympic Park and accredited hotel complexes and villages, in the coastal cluster of arenas and venues up in the mountains," the AP reported.
As construction work continued late Sunday, a pack of at least a half-dozen healthy-looking dogs roamed around a loading zone of a gondola, 400 meters (1,200 feet) above the Gorki Plaza in the mountain venues for the Olympics.
An ongoing practice of killing stray dogs is being covered under the guise of an excuse by the city authorities, animal activist Dina Filippova, among the opponents of the latest dog-culling plan, said.
"We should understand that it is done not only before the Olympics but constantly," she told the AP in an interview in downtown Sochi, where she was trying to find homes for seven puppies she recently rescued near the Olympic Park. "Two killers from that company work for the city to kill 300 dogs a month."
"It is not humane," she added. "There is a humane way of solving the problem of stray dogs which is used in Europe and the United States and even in some countries of the former Soviet Union - that is a mass sterilization which eventually leads to no stray dogs on the streets."
Sorokin's company operates in the Krasnodar region, which includes Sochi and the neighboring area. He refused to say how many dogs they kill a year, calling it a "commercial secret."
Sergei Krivonosov, a lawmaker from the Krasnodar region, last year supported the dog culling. He said taking the dogs off the street was Russia's "responsibility to the international community and that their elimination is the quickest way to solve this problem."
Claiming that authorities should encourage dog shelters, he agreed that that this is "not the most humane way" of dealing with the problem, the AP reported.
"Sochi city hall last year announced a contract 'to catch and dispose' of strays in Sochi - a move that animal activists vehemently protested. Authorities pledged to give up the practice and build animal shelters for strays instead," the AP reported.
While activists said that there is no evidence that a shelter has been built, city hall said in a statement on its website that it had opened a dog shelter Monday for 100 dogs.
Despite activists' efforts to push for more humane ways to deal with the issue, shooting stray dogs has been common practice in many Russian regions, according to the AP.
Nadine Kincaid, an Olympic volunteer from Portland, Oregon, was surprised by how many dogs are roaming around Sochi.
"There are a lot of dogs everywhere. Right behind where we're staying, there's a whole legion of dogs," she said. "I come from a town where there are leash laws and everyone has to pick up after their dogs, so that's unusual to me to see that."
Kincaid said she would be upset if the dogs were being poisoned, the AP reported.
"As an animal lover, for me that's sad. But if they're like stray cats, they can keep breeding and cause more problems. So I can see, maybe, why," she added. "It's sad, but what do you do if you can't control them?"
