A Chinese-American animal rights activist has been jailed for walking a young cow near the Kremlin, state media reported Wednesday.
Alisa Day, 34, told the state-run TASS news agency she had bought the calf online “so it wouldn’t be eaten.”
Police detained her as she walked with the animal, reportedly chanting "Animals are not food," on Red Square.
She was sentenced to 13 days of arrest on charges of disobeying police orders and fined 20,000 rubles ($286), while the calf was sent to an animal rehabilitation center.
“I just wanted to show the cow her country, her capital. In fact, I enjoy walking farm animals because people sometimes tell me that they start eating less meat when they meet my animals. But now I just wanted to spend time with her,” she told the Izvestia daily on Wednesday.
Day describes herself as a “Chinese national who’s been living long-term in Russia” on the Russian social network VKontakte.
Her profile contains photos of herself with a black sheep in various public settings, including a square, a train and a building lobby.
In 2021, Ukrainian media reported that Day was spotted walking a calf and a pig in the east-central city of Dnipro.
“I wanted to save [the animals] because people eat [them],” Day said in Russian in a video interview at the time.
Day was also profiled by British media in 2019 for rescuing another pig from slaughter in London, where she had taken it on walks to restaurants, trains and parks.
“Some people told me point blank they are becoming vegetarians after meeting my pig,” the Daily Mail quoted Day, a native of New York, as saying at the time.
However, she subsequently faced a backlash for keeping the animal in her small apartment and was forced to surrender it to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
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