Activist's attempt to check dog shelter results in beating and questioning by FSB

Three men have beaten up an animal rights activist when he tried to check the living conditions of dogs at a shelter that is supposed to provide humane care for stray animals. One of the attackers wrote a denunciation against the activist, accusing him of discrediting the military.

Denis Djalaganiya, an animal handling inspector, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that he had received a signal from animal rights activists that there are dogs in the shelter in Tikhoretsk, which, instead of being kept, are simply killed; their corpses are taken out to some unknown place. On July 11, he arrived at the shelter and began to monitor what was happening there.

He showed his inspector's ID, but he was not let into the shelter. Then he saw relatives and friends of the shelter hostess; they ran after him, knocked him down and began beating him with sticks.

The next day, he was summoned to the branch of the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) in Tikhoretsk, where he was questioned about discrediting the Russian Army, based on the application of one of his attackers. It turned out that he has provided FSB officers with an audio recording of Djalaganiya’s negative statements about the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine.

Djalaganiya himself has explained that he is a member of various animal protection chats, and, perhaps, had expressed his pacifist position somewhere.

“I am an SMO participant; and this animal rights activist spoke negatively about the SMO. Our guys are dying there; and I couldn’t resist striking him,” the attacker has explained, adding that Djalaganiya’s negative statements about the SMO were conveyed to him by acquaintances from the chat in which Denis is a member.

Denis Djalaganiya has noted that he does not treat his statements as discrediting the Russian Army. The man who had attacked him is thus trying to evade responsibility for beatings and involvement in dog killings.