Responding to the outrage caused by revelations that local authorities had enacted the Cruella De Vil act and ordered the ritual slaughter of Sochi’s sizeable stray dog population to beautify its thoroughfares in the lead up to the 2014 Winter Games, kindly Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has stepped in to save up to 2000 stray dogs from the firing squad.
Deripasha, who Wikipedia tells us is the Russian Chairman of Supervisory Board of Basic Element company, CEO and President of En+ Group and a member of the Board of Directors and CEO of United Company RUSAL, an elaborate way of saying ‘rich industrialist’, has invested heavily in the games thus far but cut yet another cheque this week to ensure the safe passage of up to 2000 stray cats and dogs to a newly erected animal shelter in Baranovka.
According to the New York Times the shelter is being called PovoDog – not a cruel jibe at its canine inhabitants’ low socio-economic status but a play on the Russian word povodok, which means leash. That doesn’t make it any less funny, though.
