The Russian government has hired a company to kill stray dogs before the Olympics, ABC News reports.
Sochi has a sizeable stray dog population.
Alexei Sorokin, the owner of the company hired to cull the population, defended the practice in an interview with ABC. He said the dogs are incubators for disease and could potentially disrupt the games by attacking tourists and even interfering with competition.
"Let's call things by their real name. These dogs are biological trash," he said.
Yahoo's Charles Robinson is on the scene in Sochi. This morning, he saw several dead dogs near some of the mountain venues:
There are several really big dogs laying on the Sochi mountain boardwalk. They don't appear to be alive. Weird.
— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) February 2, 2014Apparently Sochi is indeed poisoning stray dogs and that's what I stumbled upon this morning. A pretty disturbing scene. Large dogs, too.
— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) February 2, 2014Based on the tweets from reporters in Sochi, it seems like the dogs are a part of every day life in the city.
Stray puppy dogs have an automatic accreditation in the Sochi Olympic village pic.twitter.com/VGpQ0oK82W
— Alicia Kendig (@Sport_NutriLish) January 30, 2014Four stray dogs outside my hotel in #Sochi. Even some police are sympathetic and occasionally feed. Very gentle. pic.twitter.com/wOxb2lUBrm
— Andrew Chang (@AndrewChangCBC) February 1, 2014From Getty Images:
