Finally, the law of Ukraine “On protection of animals from cruelty” started working. On June 11 Sviatoshynsky District Court of Kyiv sentenced student Aleks Vedula to four years in prison for animal abuse and posting violence scenes on-line. Last fall police arrested 19-year-old student Vedula after he posted online videos and photos of murdering dogs and puppies. Vedula’s friend Roman Polibin took it all on video. Polibin was sentenced to four-year probation for this. Computer system unit used for storing videos and uploading them to the Internet, particularly, to social networks, was impounded from Vedula’s apartment. Psychiatrists found him sane. As always, during the court hearing action of animal protection activist took place outside the court. The activists demanded a fair trial. Public concern has played a crucial role in that the law took the side of animals.
COMMENTARY
Ania SERPINSKA, director of Kyiv City Society for Animal Protection:
“It is our victory. For the first time in the history of Ukraine a person who treated animals with cruelty satisfying his sadistic pathological needs received the deserved punishment (we demanded the maximum sentence of five years in prison provided by the Article 300 ‘propaganda of cruelty’). But I am afraid that this is not the end: they will file an appeal, cassation, and so on. If the sentence will remain unchanged, it will be a small victory of humanity in Ukraine. I think that the greatest credit for this goes to animal protection activists and the judge. We are extremely thankful to the judge because she appeared in court as a normal, humane, and civilized person. In her place there could be a conservative person with his own personal negative attitude towards animals, who maybe was bitten by a dog at some point in his life. We would also like to note the position of the public: today in Ukraine there is a pretty strong animal protection movement that has influence on government agencies. The third thing that we would like to stress is the absolute inaction of the police. The fact that Vedula was brought into court was possible not due to their efforts. Police did not search for him, despite all our appeals, protests, and letters. They still do not look for sadists or people who poison animals. This young man was surrendered by doghunters – they acknowledged this fact. A few months ago I was at a briefing in the office of a newspaper and there was an online communication with a doghunter. His face was covered but he answered the questions and asked his own. He said that they handed Vedula over themselves because they kill dogs but do not abuse them and do not make a show of it and that Vedula compromised them.
“Unfortunately, murder and poisoning of dogs still continues in Ukraine and doghunters admit it. In Kyiv people at animal control service at least don’t kill animals, but the things that happen in other regions are terrifying. Everyone there related to mass killings of animals should be sentenced to five years of imprisonment. For example, in Luhansk they do this right on the streets: they use a prohibited curarelike chemical that causes death in dogs from asphyxiation in about 15-20 minutes. I went there with a German Princess Maja von Hohenzollern, but the mayor did not allow us to visit the communal enterprise that provides animal control services and euthanasia of animals. It is obvious that everything there is done in violation of veterinary legislation, the law on protection of animals, sanitary standards, not to mention the fact of embezzlement of public funds. That is why the experience of Kyiv should extend to all of Ukraine no matter how difficult it might be.”
