With the Euro 2012 soccer championship right around the corner, Ukraine is trying to clean up its streets… by slaughtering stray dogs.
Everything from capturing and killing strays, to leaving poisoned sausages on the streets has been used to "clean" the city.
Animal welfare groups have been accusing Ukraine of using inhumane and illegal methods of killing dogs.
A spokesperson from the Ukrainian Association of Animal Protection Organizations, said:
"It's a slaughterhouse. We are convinced that there is an unofficial order to purge Euro cities of stray animals so that, God forbid, some stray dog doesn't bite some foreigner."
Ukraine has a stray dog population estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Officially, strays are supposed to be caught, sterilized and then released into areas where they pose no threat to people.
What really happens is very different. With shelters being virtually nonexistent, no one interested in adoption and sterilization expensive, most dogs are just put down.
And the way they're put down is not through anesthesia and then a lethal injection. Ukraine just goes straight to the lethal injection. So the dog suffers horribly painful muscle spasms and is left to die in agony.
The Ukraine government is denying at every turn any knowledge or consent of any of this, and refusing to investigate anything.
It's absolutely disgusting that an entire government can let such atrocities happen to animals, let alone actively order them to be carried out.
[Image via WENN.]
Tags: dog, euro cup, massacre, poison, soccer, stray, ukraine