Sochi City Hall ordered a catch and kill of all stray dogs who have been traveling in large packs and living near construction sites where workers pet and give them food, the Associated Press reported.
Basya Services general director Alexei Sorokin said his pest control firm was contracted by Sochi City Hall to begin the extermination of stray dogs and continue throughout the Olympics beginning Friday, according to the AP.
According to Sorokin, Basya Services catches and disposes of stray dogs but he did not elaborate how they would be killed, or where all the dead dogs are taken, the AP reported.
The stray dogs have been causing a number of problems including "biting children" and can be seen everywhere: inside the Olympic park, hotels and villages in the mountains, according to Sorokin, the AP reported.
"A dog ran into the Fisht Stadium, we took it away," Sorokin said, according to the AP. "God forbid something like this happens at the actual opening ceremony. This will be a disgrace for the whole country."
Those who oppose the catch-and-kill measure say the killing of stray dogs as a way of dealing with the stray dog issue has been present long before the Olympics, the AP reported.
"We should understand that it is done not only before the Olympics but constantly," Animal activist Dina Filippova told the AP in an interview. "Two killers from that company work for the city to kill 300 dogs a month."
Sochi first introduced the catch-and-kill contract last year, but after an angered animal activist protested, they agreed to open animal shelters instead, according to the AP. Activists say there are no animal shelters in Sochi, though city hall posted a statement on their website announcing a shelter on Monday.
Sorokin said his company kills stray in the nearby Krasnodar region, but would not give a number on how many dogs his company kills a year, and said it is a "commercial secret," the AP reported.
"It is not humane," Filippova told the AP. "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."
A Krasnodar lawmaker named Sergei Krivonosov said he supported the measure last year stating "that their elimination is the quickest way to solve this problem," but acknowledged it was "not the most humane way" of handling the problem, the AP reported.
