Housewarming in a concentration camp. Moscow authorities are evicting 3,000 pets from the Kozhukhovsky shelter

Julia Suntsova

The Department of Housing and Public Utilities under the Government of Moscow ordered the removal of the municipal shelter from the Eastern Administrative District of Moscow for the 41st kilometer from the Moscow Ring Road. The allocated place is the infamous Malinki solid waste landfill. It was closed in 2015 due to the protest efforts of residents, and at present, reclamation work is to be carried out there.

In this cursed place, they are going to transport animals from the Kozhukhovsky shelter.

Kozhukhovsky orphan menagerie - the end of a large city conveyor. Stray dogs and cats caught on the streets of the metropolis are brought here. Owners who have played enough also rent their pets here.

Experienced animal rights activists always talk with horror about municipal shelters: most of the prisoners here have only one way - death, and rather painful.

“DO NOT SEND your animals to municipal shelters! Dogs and cats have no future there. Don't be so gullible about what officials tell you through the media. Shelters are a cruel end for most of those who got there, cry out from the main page of the website of the Kozhukhovsky shelter. - If you want to give your dog to a shelter and call us for this purpose, do not be surprised by a tough conversation in response. We love animals, we do not consider them toys and we do not like people who do not understand this. We adopt shelter dogs, we don't put them here!” - written on the website of the shelter.

The Kozhukhovsky municipal shelter, however, has always had an important distinguishing feature: a close-knit volunteer community. Guardians buy food, medicine, clean enclosures, walk dogs, and socialize feral animals. And most importantly, they are trying with all their efforts to get them out of here, looking for old and new owners.

Volunteers from the Kozhukhovsky shelter interact minimally with the local administration, which, in their opinion, does not love and does not care for their animals. Volunteers-altruists are always remembered with great gratitude by casual visitors and those who found a furry friend here.

- We've been through a lot. The Zhivodersky management company, which replaced it with a commercial company that was not interested in anything other than profit, fought with killer feed and monstrously illiterate management, mutual responsibility. All these years, only volunteers really took care of the animals. Desperate volunteers who have found 7,000 dogs and 1,500 cats a home, hundreds of animals received veterinary care in third-party clinics, because the municipal block does not have the necessary equipment. We fought against the complete non-compliance with the Regulations: the lack of walking 100%, the constant shortage of workers - they even forgot to put water! Devastation, dirt, disease, death. And here is a new problem. A deadly threat looms again, volunteers say.

City Hall literally equated these dogs and cats with garbage. For many years, the animals have been in the operational management of the Automotive Roads Institution. In the vision of municipal services, stray animals are urban slag. They collectively become infected while sitting in cramped common enclosures, eat the cheapest food and can hardly hope for high-quality treatment - with such an attitude, animals fade and die very quickly. Without the care of volunteers in municipal shelters, animals are doomed.

The difference between a shelter within Moscow and a shelter 85 kilometers from its former location is colossal. Calling into the nursery in the evening on the way from work or making a six-hour round trip, at least (if there are no traffic jams) are fundamentally different things. The nearest public transport stop is 4 kilometers from the new shelter. The bus only runs twice a day.

A shelter within the city will always have enough trustees, sponsors, donors.

Moving it outside the Moscow Ring Road makes life much more difficult for those who would like to take care of animals.

"Three thousand dogs and four hundred cats are left without walking, regular veterinary examinations, daily cleaning of enclosures, and even simple human attention and affection. The team of veterinarians who saved the lives of these animals crumbles. Difficult transport accessibility reduces to almost zero the opportunity for potential owners to get acquainted with its inhabitants. They are simply sent there to die without witnesses", - volunteer Yevgeny Romanovich comments.

Animal activists note that the shelter under construction is likely to be a closed area. Guests are not welcome there now. Volunteers, whom everyone knows in person and by name in the Kozhukhovsky shelter, cannot get behind the new fence. The officials in charge of the construction from the Krasnopakhorsky settlement admit that free access is also blocked for them, they can get inside only with a special pass.

"After the move, we basically lose the opportunity to even look at our animals once. Some of the animals may not survive the move. Those that survive will be left without the help of the people who cared for them. If you did not guess where hell is being recreated on earth, then we warn you - it will be here, near the village of Chirikovo", - says volunteer Anna D.

The solution to the problem of stray animals in Moscow has for many years been managed by the housing and communal services structure under the Government of Moscow, which is headed by Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov.

Animal activists believe that Petr Biryukov's unit organized the transfer of the municipal shelter "behind the backs of the public".

- To all our requests, the Moscow Government, the management company and the administration of the Krasnopakhorskoye settlement sent in response only dutiful replies and assurances that the site allegedly had not yet been allocated! At the same time, local builders deny this. Here they changed the purpose of the site and changed the permitted type of use. In the documents, everything is completely unambiguous: "the maintenance of stray animals".

Whether it is the cowardice of officials or a deliberate desire to make control over the maintenance of captured animals as inaccessible as possible, it does not matter. Both characterize responsible persons in the worst way. Both are a sentence for animals, says Anna D.

According to the minutes of the meeting in the Government of Moscow No. 18-21-21 / 21, it was planned to relocate the Kozhukhovsky shelter to the Krasnopakhorskoye settlement, namely: it was planned to ensure the movement of animals and property on time until February 25, 2022. The document was signed on October 20, 2021. two deputy mayors of the capital, Petr Biryukov and Vladimir Yefimov, respectively responsible for housing and communal services and economic policy (available to the editors).

At the same time, the reason for the relocation of the municipal shelter is explained directly in the minutes of the meeting. Pretty prosaic. The property complex of the Kozhukhovsky shelter at the address in Moscow: st. Pehorskaya, possession 1B "will be handed over for demolition".

In the media, the move of the shelter was associated with the creation of the Rudnevo technopark on its territory - the address is included by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation in the federal register of industrial parks.

“The issue of relocating the shelter to a new location is being considered in connection with the implementation of an investment project to create the Rudnevo technopark on the territory of the industrial zone in the Kosino-Ukhtomsky district”, - Interfax was told in the press service of the Department of Housing and Public Utilities and Improvement of the Government of Moscow. In place of the Kozhukhovsky animal shelter, 281,000 production areas should appear.

The Department, headed by Petr Biryukov, did not respond to the editorial request of Novye Izvestia at the time of the publication of the material.

The contractor of the Rudnevo technopark, in turn, notes that the exact timing of the commissioning of the new facility has not been set, but it is known for sure that it will be built in three phases, and completion is scheduled for 2023.

Life is also in full swing at the construction site in the Krasnopakhorsky settlement. On the one hand, the Malinki landfill, on the other, the largest memorial cemetery complex in Europe, White Birches. The compartments in the new shelter look like prison cells (see photo). There is simply nowhere to visually stick dog walking areas on the site.

A petition for the preservation of the Kozhukhovsky shelter within the boundaries of Moscow has collected almost 200,000 signatures.

But Moscow officials are not ready to change their decision.

"Twice - on February 14 and March 14, volunteers met with officials in the Prefecture. No results. On April 9, 2022, volunteers invited them to make their way to the shelter and meet there. The invitation was ignored. It is very hard to believe that so many animals can be sentenced to death with one stroke of the pen!", - says the deputy of the Moscow City Duma of the XVII convocation Yevgeny Stupin.

The biggest villainy in this story, of course, is that a person brought these animals to the humiliating line of survival. And unlike humans, these animals have no choice...