Astrakhan has awarded another publicly funded contract for the capture and management of dogs without owners.
The contract is worth 9.99 million rubles approximately (£88,000 or US$119,000) and will remain in force until 31 December 2026. The procurement attracted only one bidder. Although the auction was formally declared unsuccessful because there was no competition, the contract was awarded to that sole participant.
The documents do more than place a price on collecting dogs. They place separate prices on confining them, killing them and disposing of their bodies.
According to the published breakdown, the contractor may charge 2,029.68 rubles to capture and transport one animal, 13,041 rubles for temporary confinement, examination, registration, diagnostic work and feeding, 1,725.46 rubles to euthanise one dog (yes the contractor can kill the dogs) and a further 1,260.51 rubles to dispose of the body.
The most expensive item is long-term sheltering. Keeping one animal that cannot be returned to its former location is priced at 121,884.45 rubles.
The contract makes killing and disposal vastly cheaper than providing ongoing shelter care.
Captured dogs will reportedly be placed in ten-day quarantine and examined by a veterinary professional. The procurement description says euthanasia may be used for dogs considered incurably or dangerously ill and those displaying what has been translated as unmotivated aggression. Other dogs are supposed to be transferred to a shelter or passed to new owners.
But this contract is not operating within an ordinary capture, sterilisation, vaccination and return programme.
Astrakhan and the neighbouring Privolzhsky district remain under an extraordinary situation regime for animals without owners. The regional government extended that regime in March 2026, allowing it to continue until March 2027.
Local reporting on the regime states that all dogs on the streets may be collected, including those that have already been sterilised, tagged and returned. The capture sterilise return system does not operate in the affected municipalities.
This immediately raises questions about what happens after capture.
What evidence must be recorded before a dog is classified as aggressive? Who makes that assessment? How is fear, pain or defensive behaviour distinguished from unmotivated aggression? Is the decision reviewed by an independent veterinarian? What happens to dogs that are not killed? Which shelters receive them, what capacity do those shelters have and can the public trace each animal from the street to its final outcome?
There is also an obvious risk that owned dogs will be collected.
A separate case from Astrakhan Oblast involved a dog taken into temporary confinement before being identified as owned. Reports warned that even the presence of a collar would not necessarily prevent a dog from being captured if its owner was not beside it.
Under a system that removes every roaming dog, identification, documentation and traceability are not administrative details. They may determine whether a dog returns home, enters indefinite confinement or is killed.
Several reports have claimed that approximately 500 dogs could be euthanised under the latest contract. That figure must not be treated as a confirmed target.
It was calculated by removing the substantial cost of long-term sheltering from the contract value and estimating how many dogs could be captured, confined, killed and disposed of using the remaining unit prices. The procurement documents do not state that 500 dogs will be killed. Nor do they provide a reliable breakdown showing how many animals will be captured, sheltered, rehomed or euthanised.
The absence of those numbers does not make the contract less concerning. It makes transparency even more important.
Astrakhan has already committed considerable public money to this policy. Earlier procurement notices published between January and March reportedly totalled 69.95 million rubles for six contracts relating to street-dog management. The latest 9.99 million-ruble contract appears to take the value of the city’s 2026 procurements towards 80 million rubles.
Yet the population problem has not disappeared.
Figures attributed to the Astrakhan regional veterinary service showed the estimated number of dogs without owners across the region increasing from 16,007 to 20,010 in six months. Within Astrakhan itself, the estimated population reportedly rose from 4,903 to 6,650 after an earlier reduction.
This is precisely why killing cannot be presented as population management.
Removing dogs without addressing abandonment, uncontrolled breeding, ownership identification, waste management and access to sterilisation simply creates space for more dogs to appear. An expensive cycle of capture and killing may temporarily remove animals from view, but it does not repair the system producing them.
The latest procurement also exposes a deeper conflict in Astrakhan’s policy. The contract’s technical language appears to restrict euthanasia to specified categories of dogs, while reporting on the extraordinary regime describes a much broader system under which unclaimed dogs may be killed after temporary confinement.
The authorities should publish the complete operating rules and explain exactly which standard applies.
For every dog collected under this contract, there should be a publicly accountable record showing where the animal was found, whether identification was checked, the veterinary findings, any behavioural assessment, the location of transfer, attempts to find an owner or adopter and the final outcome.
Without that evidence, the public is being asked to finance a system without being allowed to see clearly what it is purchasing.
Astrakhan has priced capture. It has priced confinement. It has priced euthanasia. It has even priced the disposal of a dog’s body.
What it has not yet demonstrated is that this publicly funded system is humane, transparent or capable of solving the problem it claims to address.
Read the procurement reporting and cost breakdown
Read the report correcting the unconfirmed 500-dog claim
Read about the extension of Astrakhan’s extraordinary regime